Most of our ancestors, while often counted as pioneers, were not usually the men who cut the very first trees to hack a space in the woods and start a new community. But they often followed soon after, drawn by the promise of land and the possibility of making a good life for their families. Generally they were stalwart members of the community, church members, respected for their integrity, good solid citizens. Over the years, we have seldom found them holding public office.
But there were a few exceptions. We would like to tell you about one.
Heman Pettit and his wife Martha Selfridge Pettit moved to the Jefferson County, NY area from New England about 1801, just as the pioneers were struggling to get a toehold on the land. He was a builder of mills, so his expertise was in high demand and he built many of the mills in the area. By 1837 he had moved his family to a farm on the Jewettsville road between Dexter and Sackets Harbor. Some report he did shipbuilding and that would be in accordance with his skills and his location.
Heman and Martha had six children: Susannah (always designated as the first white child born in Jefferson County), Eliada, William, John, Catherine and Rebekah. Susannah, we know, was the wife of our ancestor James Douglass, who moved to the Pillar Point area around 1820. James must have been a man who elicited faith in his integrity or it is unlikely Heman and Martha would have allowed their oldest daughter to marry at 18. Martha was a staunch Presbyterian, who helped establish Presbyterian Societies in Watertown and in Sackets Harbor. The Pettits saw that their sons received more than the average education of the times. Referring to son William who farmed all his life, the historians note he “had a substantial education and chose agriculture as his field”. They sent John to college to study to be a minister, his mother’s hope for him. But mother’s dreams do not always come true, and children’s dreams are often hooked to a different star.
John Pettit is the subject of this article. We spent a day in Lafayette, IN, recently to learn more about him.
He did not take to theology, and announced to his professor that he wanted to study law. When the professor continued to force religion upon him, John rebelled and left college, going home, where his mother entreated him to return. He agreed only if religion would be abandoned. His parents reluctantly consented. But the professor did not, evidently, and when he continued to promote religious studies, John angrily left, and knew there was no sense in going home. He went to Waterloo, NY, where a Judge Potter needed an office boy. He studied law and did so well that in 1830 at the age of 23, he set out for the west. His teacher funded his travel, which took him as far as Troy, Ohio, where he taught school for a year, earning enough to pay back Judge Potter and to continue his travel.
In May 1831, he arrived in Lafayette, IN, riding his horse, with $3 in his pocket. It did not take long for John Pettit to be noticed as a person of great intellect and ability. In 1838, he won election on the Democratic ticket as representative from Tippecanoe County to the Lower House of the Legislature. That was the start of a long career in public life. He held the office of U.S. District Atty. for the District of Indiana, was elected to Congress where he served three successive terms in the House, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of Indiana, elected to the U.S. Senate, Judge of the Indiana Circuit Court, Chief Justice of the Territory of Kansas, Mayor of Lafayette, and Judge of the Supreme Court of Indiana until only a few months before his death.
We read several articles about John Pettit, including a couple biographies and his obituary. There is no doubt he was a prominent man in Lafayette, but what impressed us the most were the direct quotes of his participation in the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1851. Indiana had come to a critical point in time. Her population had doubled in the past ten years. So many counties had been added that the people did not feel they were adequately represented in the current Indiana government and changes needed to be made. Representatives from each county were present at the convention, each there with their own agenda and the state was struggling to maintain its unity. Time after time, John Pettit was quoted as the person who put forward the eloquent and rational arguments for a strong central state government that swung the votes towards that course. Indiana was fortunate to have such a strong forceful mind to direct her way.
Regarding starting legislative sessions on Monday as opposed to Thursday, Pettit “urged beginning on Monday as done by Congress, by the Legislature of Ohio, and nearly all the State Legislatures in the Union… to do a good week’s work, it was always necessary to commence Monday morning…. if meeting on Monday would cause the desecration of the Sabbath, (then) for the last thirty-four years have the devotional feelings of the people living at the seat of Government been disturbed”.
Regarding the desire of the county boards to be able to enact laws for their own districts, Pettit insisted that “legislation should be uniform, so that wherever the Indianian sets his foot, he might be governed and protected by the same laws, and liable to the same obligations…if you had a little Legislature of three men in each county, then in less than five years…you will have a conflict between your sovereign Legislature and the legislatures of your counties….All you need in a board of commissioners is power to administer the laws as the Legislature shall make them”.
Regarding how legislators should be apportioned and on what basis, Pettit: “it is so many people that I want represented, and not fields, and fences, and hedges, and ditches, and mountains and valleys…If you give a representative to a county having two thirds of the representative ratio,…you will make two men in one place equal to three men in another place…representation should be based on popula-tion and not property.”
Regarding a single district for each represent-ative instead of so many representatives for a county, a new idea, Pettit: “single representative and senatorial districts would give each voter the same power and influence in the legislative department of government wherever he may live”.
Regarding length of term and limiting tenure in office, Pettit: “if you tell an incumbent that no matter however faithful and competent he might be that he cannot be reelected, this would tend to produce a stupor, lethargy, negligence, and want of readiness to serve the people that ought not be tolerated…the prospect of a re-election…is often the greatest incentive of the faithful discharge of the proper functions and duties of an office.”
Regarding what to do about the negroes who had emigrated from the south, Pettit: “no two distinct races can live together harmoniously”… (he would) vote to prevent blacks from coming to the state, but if those there and their descendants were allowed to remain (some wanted to ship them to Liberia), he wanted to encourage them to acquire property. He explained that “if (there is) a body of men so entirely disfranchised as to have no interest in the harmony, well-being, and prosperity of the community, paying no taxes and having no stake in the country, …then fires may rage in your towns and villages, without an effort, on their part, to save your property…if you induce them to acquire property beside you, they will always be ready to contribute their aid in the protection of your property. They would then have an inducement to aid in suppressing riots and disorders; you would make them better citizens and safer neighbors.” (Of all the representatives quoted, Pettit was the only one to couch his arguments in the good of the community rather than in the worth of the negroes; community building was his continued purpose. – Ed)
A few years earlier, in 1847, when the United States was at war with Mexico, Indianians were opposed to further annexation of southern land. Pettit would “not support any proposition that will tolerate, even for a moment, a further extension of slavery, believing, as I do, it is a curse – a curse to mankind – a curse to the world”. (“Some bio-graphies of Abraham Lincoln place John Pettit on the roster of those witty and colorful lawyers who swapped tall tavern stories with Honest Abe in the nights after court sessions in Danville, Ill, during the 1850s” – Old Lafayette, Kreibel)
Of all the things we read about John Pettit, the one that seems to fit the best was a quote from his funeral oration by his one-time law partner, Godlove Orth, who said of Pettit, “He was no scholar, but he had a mind and force of intellect which could grasp great and mighty questions.”
From his biography: “he was indifferent to human praise and censure. Forms and techni-calities to him were mere rubbish. Not logic nor argumentation but the winged words of intuition for him split the difficulty. His hatred of deception, fraud and hypocrisy was known to all men.”
It must have been a dire pain then that caused him to break with the Democratic party after they determined not to nominate him for another term as Chief Justice in 1876. The Democrats did not think he could be reelected because of a furor over how he had disposed of a would-be preacher’s misconduct. He wrote a stinging essay to the Indianapolis Journal, a Republican gadfly, which published it. In part, he wrote “I would rather be in the midst of bold and determined enemies than surrounded by cowardly and fallacious friends. In a note published a few days ago I said in reference to my action with the lunatic preacher, “I did only what was my right and duty;” and I now add that he who says that I used irreverent words about Christ or his mother is a liar and a scoundrel. I pledge myself to vote against the Democratic Party this fall.”
He had been a Democrat all his life. Now he had no political country. At the end of his term, Jan. 1, 1877, he left the high court. He died of a stroke the following June 17, 1877. In spite of the acrimony of his last few months, nothing could destroy the illustrious career and the benefits to Indiana of his public service. We are proud to be related to him, as you should be too. For those in my generation, descendants of James Douglass, John Pettit is our third great uncle.
Addendum: In all that we read, John Pettit’s wife is never mentioned. We could find no marriage record or obituary. The census says her name was Abigail and she was born in SC. That is all we know of her. John and Abigail had one son, John S. Pettit, who married in Lafayette, had three children, was serving as U.S. District Atty in Indiana in 1880, and in 1886, moved to Washington D.C. to take a position in the treasury department.
The acorn does not fall far from the tree. ###