Hon. Thomas EWING ^4,6

	Born: 28 Dec 1789, West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia (Now West Virginia)
	Married: 17 Jan 1819, Philemon Beecher Home 30
	Died: 26 Oct 1871, Lancaster, Fairfield Co., OH 11
	Buried: Lancaster, Fairfield Co., OH

   General Notes:

An immense amount of information about Hon. Thomas Ewing, his family, genealogy, career, etc. can be found at the Library of Congress, the Madison Building, in the Manuscript Division. Over 300 boxes of material are stored there. Containers 284-290 are devoted to Ewing genealogy. Also, material (mostly concerning his career) can be found at the National Archives, Record Group 48.

In 1869, Thomas Ewing wrote an autobiographical sketch of his life which was published in the Cincinnati Commercial shortly after his death. He wrote about his early childhood in Athens County, Ohio, where his parents had settled in April, 1798. There were only a few families settled there at the time and no road or even pathway led to them. The distance between neighbors was about twelve miles. "We had wild fruits of several varieties, very abundant, and some of them exceedingly fine...we had a great variety of wild plums. We of course had no mills. The nearest was on Wolf Creek, about fourteen miles distant; from this we brought our first summer's supply of breadstuffs."

During his first year in Athens, at age nine, he says he was very lonely. "My brother, George, eleven years older than I, was too much a man to be my companion, and my sisters could not be with me geneerally in the woods and among the rocks and caves; but a small spaniel dog, almost as intelligent as a boy, was always with me. I was the reader of the family, but we had few books. I remember but one besides Watts's Psalms and Hymns" that a child could read -- "The Vicar of Wakefield," which was almost committed to memory; the poetry which it contained, entirely." As soon as a library evolved in the community of Athens, Thomas began his more scholarly pursuits. In his autobiography he says he once walked twenty miles to borrow a translation of Virgil's Aeneid.

In order to secure funds for a college education, Thomas obtained employment in the Kanawha salt works, where he sometimes labored as long as twenty hours a day. Later, he was to become an operator and substantial owner of salt works in the Chauncey area. In the course of two or three years he saved enough from his scanty earnings to free his father's farm of debt and with the meager surplus enrolled, in 1809, in Ohio University. After his funds were exhausted, he returned to the salt works to save more money. He later returned to the University and became its first graduate in 1815. It was the first B.A. degree ever granted by any college or university in the Northwest Territory.

In 1815, he began his legal studies in the offices of General Beecher, in Lancaster, Ohio. His rise in the bar was rapid and he was known for his sound logical mind, a mastery of the general principles of law, and a comprehensive power of analysis. In 1830, Ewing was elected, on the Whig ticket, to the U.S. Senate in which he served until 1837 and in which he is said to have held his own in public debate with such renowned contemporaries as Webster, Clay and Calhoun. On the accession of General Harrison to the Presidency in 1841, Mr. Ewing was called into public service, accepting a place in the Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. The death of General Harrison brought John Tyler into office and, on his special invitation, the Harrison Cabinet remained in office. The next year, Mr. Ewing and many other cabinet members submitted their resignations, believing that Tyler had betrayed the Party. In the formation of the Cabinet of General Zachary Taylor in 1849, Thomas Ewing was invited to take charge of the new Department of the Interior. He filled this post with honor and ability until August, 1850, when after the death of President Taylor, President Millard Fillmore failed to harmonize with the current cabinet.

During his lifetime, Thomas Ewing was an advisor to four presidents. He knew Lincoln well, and while serving as Secretary of the Interior had offered him the office of Commissioner of the General Land Office, which Lincoln found it necessary to decline. It is believed that Ewing's advice to the great emancipator in the Mason-Slidell case prevented an estrangement, if not actual war, with England.

When Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln in the presidency, Ewing continued as an advisor to Johnson. In 1868, when he was 78 years old, he was nominated by Johnson to be Secretary of War. Under a technical ruling, however, the Senate refused to confirm the nomination on the grounds that no vacancy existed.

In the fall of 1869, while addressing the U.S. Supreme Court, Ewing was stricken and collapsed on the court floor. He remained in ill health from that day, bedfast most of the time. His death occurred at his home in Lancaster, Ohio, Oct. 26, 1871, at the age of 82. Following his death, both the Ohio and the U.S. Supreme Courts held and published memorial proceedings for him, unprecedented honors for any person not a member of the judicial bodies. Ewing Hall, erected on the campus of Ohio University, was named in his honor and the Alumni Gateway, erected in 1915, was constructed in memory of the centennial of his graduation from that institution.

From the Archives at Notre Dame Library: Biographical Sketch

Thomas Ewing (1789-1871), United States Senator from Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, trusted advisor to the President Andrew Johnson, and a highly successful lawyer, was born near West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia on December 28, 1789, the sixth child and second son of George and Rachel (Harris) Ewing. He died on October 26, 1871. His father, a school teacher who had served in the Continental Currency, had migrated to Virginia from his home in Cumberland County, New Jersey. Around 1793, the family moved to Waterford, on the Muskingum River, and, in the Spring of 1798, moved once again, this time to Ames Township, now in Athens County, Ohio. Taught to read by an older sister, young Thomas soon demonstrated a healthy appetite for reading and a remarkable memory for what he had read. Until his twentieth year he labored on his father's farm. Nights, he devoted to the past time he enjoyed most -- reading.

In August 1808, anxious to secure the funds needed to further his education, he set out for the Kanawha Salt Works, near Charleston, Virginia. For the next sixty-three years there were only a few brief periods when he was not associated with salt-boiling, either as a worker or as an owner. Indeed, "Tom, Ewing, the Salt-Boiler" later became a Whig campaign cry. Returning home, he demonstrated his filial piety by using a portion of his earnings to help pay off the mortgage on his family's farm. With the remainder and subsequent earnings at the Salt Works, he financed his way through college. In May 1815, he and John Hunter became the first to receive B.A. degrees from Ohio University. He then returned home and in July went to Lancaster, Ohio, where, for the next thirteen months, he studied law under Philemon Beecher. In August of 1816, at the age of twenty-six, he was admitted to the Ohio Bar. In 1817 when "Pa" Beecher went to serve in Congress, Ewing was left in charge of the office and he soon had a large practice before the Ohio Supreme Court. From 1818 to 1829, he also served as Prosecuting Attorney for Fairfield County, in which capacity he was concerned primarily with the apprehension and prosecution of counterfeiters.

On January 7, 1820, Ewing, himself of Presbyterian stock but with no real church affiliation, married Philemon Beechers' niece, Maria Wills Boyle, a devout Roman Catholic and the daughter of Hugh Boyle, clerk of the court of Common Pleas of Fairfield County. They had seven children:

Philemon Beecher (November 3, 1820 - April 15, 1896)
George (August 23, 1822 - September 28, 1823)
Ellen Boyle (October 24, 1824 - November 28, 1888)
Hugh Boyle (October 31, 1826 - June 30, 1905)
Thomas (August 7, 1829 - January 21, 1896)
Charles (March 6, 1835 - June 20, 1883)
Maria Theresa (May 2, 1837 - May 11, 1910)

In addition to these children of their own, the couple helped raise several others: Charles, Abigail, and Rachel Clark, the children of Ewing's sister Rachel; Lewis Wolfley, whose father was Ewing's cousin; and, the most famous of all, William Tecumseh Sherman, who subsequently married Ewing's daughter Ellen and whose father, Charles R. Sherman, a judge of the Ohio Supreme Court, had died suddenly in 1829 leaving a widow and eleven children. A devoted family man, Ewing demonstrated a deep interest in both their education and their pastimes.

In 1823, he served as a member of a Committee appointed to revise the General Laws of Ohio. In the same year he also became a trustee of his alma mater, Ohio University, a post he held until 1832. Caught up in the canal building mania of the 1820's, he served as one of the seven commissioners, and for a brief period as President of the Board of Directors, of the Lancaster Lateral Canal Company. The young lawyer, like so many who followed the same profession, soon developed a taste for politics. Defeated in 1823 in a bid for a seat in the Ohio Legislature, for the next few years he devoted his attention to his law practice. However, in the Summer of 1827, he served as a delegate from Ohio to the Harrisburg Convention of Friends of Farming and Manufacturing which drew up a memorial requesting Congressional action to protect domestic industry. In December of the same year, he headed Fairfield County's delegation to the State Convention of Adams' Men at Columbus and served as a member of both the Resolutions Committee and the State Central Committee. Already recognized as a leader of the Ohio Bar, in January of 1828 he was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, joining the company of such brilliant practitioners as Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Robert Young Hayne.

In the Fall of 1830, he decided to stand as a candidate for United States Senator from Ohio. he was elected on the sixth ballot. On March 4, 1831, Tom Ewing, who in his only other quest for political office had been defeated in a bid for a seat in the Ohio Legislature, took his seat as a member of the Whig Party in the United States Senate. He served until March 3, 1837. Among the most active of his fellow Senators were: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Robert Young Hayne, William Campbell Preston, James Buchanan, George Mifflin Dallas, Silas Wright, Jr., Nathaniel Pitcher Tallmadge, John Jordan Crittenden, Thomas Hart Benton, William Rufus de Vane King of Alabama, John Forsyth, William Cabell Rives, John Tyler, Benjamin Watkins Leigh, Littleton Waller Tazewell, John Middleton Clayton, Felix Grundy, Alexander Porter, Willie Person Mangum, George Poindexter, Samuel Lewis Southard, Theodore Frelinghuysen, and Josiah Stoddard Johnston. He soon became one of the leaders of the opposition to President Andrew Jackson's administration. His keen intellect, demonstrated time and again in the speeches he delivered on the Senate floor, earned for him the title "Logician of the West." During his term in office he supported Clay's "American System" which called for protective tariffs and internal improvements, he advocated the re-charter of the United States Bank, he denounced Jackson's removal of deposits from that Bank as well as his "Specie Circular," he advocated reduced postal rates, and he brought about a revision of the land laws, a reorganization of the Post Office Department, and a bill for the settlement of the Ohio-Michigan boundary dispute. Despite his opposition to the Jackson Administration he supported the Force Bill as a remedy for nullification.

Within six weeks of entering the Senate he was elected a member of the important special committee set up to deal with the application of the Bank of the United States for a new charter. When the Ohio legislature "instructed" him to use his influence to prevent the rechartering of the Bank, he disputed their authority to so control his conduct as a Senator, insisting that Senators represented their State, the sovereign power, rather than the Legislature. As a member of the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads which had been investigating irregularities in the Post Office Department, on June 9, 1834, he delivered to the Senate the majority report which vigorously assailed the abuses and corruption in that Department. In return, he was violently assailed by the administration press, which found a ground of attack conveniently at hand. As a member of a Committee on Revolutionary Claims, Ewing had favored the issuing of land warrants to claimants. However, before entering the Senate he had speculated in Virginia landscrip and thus stood to profit personally from his actions as a Senator. His opponents quickly took up the charge and, indeed, he was not free of such attacks until after the Civil War when he was past seventy.

His opposition to the Jackson Administration and his refusal to follow the "instructions" of the Ohio Legislators had helped to undermine his position back home in Ohio where a pro-Administration party had come to power within the Legislature. Consequently, in January 1836, he was defeated in a bid for re-election as a result of prior redistricting which gave only six representatives to five Whig Counties having a total voting population of 30,205 while it gave fourteen representatives to ten normally Democratic counties having a total voting population of 30,504. Upon this defeat, he returned to Lancaster and resumed his law practice. Although the Calhoun wing of the party was ready in 1837 to consider him a potential candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 1840, his defeat in 1838 in a bid for the Senate seat about to be vacated by Senator Thomas Morris ruined his chances for any such position on the ticket.

In 1840, he actively campaigned for the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison, and gained for himself a national reputation as a stump orator under the name of the "Old Salt Boiler." Upon Harrison's inauguration in 1841, he was rewarded with a cabinet post as Secretary of the Treasury. He served in this capacity from March 5 to September 13, 1841. In addition to being entrusted with a distribution of a good deal of the patronage available to the Administration, he investigated and reorganized the New York Custom House, he saw to the expenditure of public funds for the care of disabled seamen, he supervised the investment of the funds left to the United States by Joseph Smithson of London for the establishment at Washington of an institution "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men" -- the origin of the Smithsonian Institute -- and he had a hand in the settlement of the McLeod affair, which grew out of a disturbance on the Canadian-American Border. In his first official report he proposed measures designed to diminish the national debt, he attacked the Independent Treasury Act which had been passed the previous year, and he advocated the establishment of a National Bank. Indeed, the chartering of a National Bank was his paramount concern. He played a major role in drafting two bills that would have chartered such a bank. However, both were vetoed by Tyler who had succeeded to the Presidency upon Harrison's untimely death. As a result of the second veto, Ewing submitted a scathing letter of resignation and, on September 13, 1841, he left the cabinet and entered into a law partnership with his oldest son, Philemon Beecher Ewing.

In 1844 he campaigned vigorously for Henry Clay's election to the Presidency. Although the Whigs carried the Ohio Legislature in that year -- the only time they were able to do so when a Senator was to be elected -- and Ewing hoped to return to the Senate, he was passed over and Thomas Corwin, who had become the idol of the Ohio Whigs by agreeing to sacrifice himself as candidate for governor in 1840, was chosen instead. By 1848, there were indications that Ewing was angling for the vice-presidential nomination. Although favored by the Taylor forces at the convention, his name was withdrawn, without either his assent or knowledge, by a fellow Ohioan, Lewis D. Campbell, who, chagrined at the failure of Henry Clay to secure the nomination for President, insisted that Ohio wanted no "sugar plums." The subsequent death of Taylor in office and succession of the Vice-President made this unauthorized withdrawal of Ewing's name especially significant. But for it, Ewing, instead of Fillmore, might have been our thirteenth President.

In the subsequent campaign he actively entered the lists for Taylor. Urged to accept a cabinet position upon Taylor's victory, he would not commit himself so long as there remained a chance for the Senate. However, the "Free Soil" Whigs of Ohio, who had resented his campaigning for Taylor, a slaveholder, refused to agree to his selection as Senator. Salmon P. Chase was chosen instead. At first considered seriously for the Post Office Department, he was eventually given the newly establish Department of the Interior. A man with organizational ability was needed and Ewing had demonstrated during his term in the Senate, at which time he had written laws reorganizing the Post Office Department and the General Land Office, that he was such a man. He served from March 8, 1849, to July 23, 1850.

However, his withdrawal from the Cabinet did not result in his immediate retirement from public life. When Thomas Cerwin became Secretary of the Treasury, Ewing was appointed by Governor Seabury Ford of Ohio to fill out Cerwin's unexpired term in the Senate. Thus, once again, Ewing found himself in the forum he loved so much. During this brief term he served on the Finance Committee, he opposed the Fugitive Slave Law and Clay's Great Compromise, and he advocated the establishment of a branch mint in California, a reduction in the postal rates, internal improvements, and various other measures of public importance. As the term was drawing to a close in 1851, he was defeated in a bid for re-election, once again because of the opposition of the "Free Soil" Whigs in the Ohio Legislature. With this defeat, he retired once again to private life and the practice of law. Although he thereafter maintained his interest in public affairs, he never again held public office.

During the last twenty years of his life, he spent his winters in Washington, arguing his cases -- his particular forte was Real Estate Cases -- before the Supreme Court, and the rest of the year, generally, at home in Lancaster, Ohio. In 1856, he refused to support any of the candidates for the Presidency. In 1860, although he preferred John Bell, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party, he nevertheless supported Abraham Lincoln, a former Whig and political friend, because he felt that in Ohio only Lincoln could defeat Stephen A. Douglas whom he regarded as too reckless. He also felt that the Republican Party, in espousing the Tariff and other old Whig principles, had veered to a more conservative course than it had adopted originally. He did, however, take exception to the anti-slavery tendencies of the Republicans and in his Chillicothe, Ohio speech of September 29, 1860, he urged the party to drop its anti-slavery character.

As the Civil War loomed ever nearer on the horizon, Ewing hoped to make moderation and compromise prevail and thus to preserve the Union. In particular, he favored the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Coast. To this end, he participated as a delegate from Ohio in the Peace Conference called by Virginia. The Conference met in Washington on February 4, 1861, and continued for twenty-three days with Ewing playing a conspicuous role. However, neither he nor the others who favored a policy of moderation were able to overcome the determined opposition of the Republican delegates. Once the war began he rendered loyal support to Lincoln's administration. Three of his four sons served as officers in the Union Army, and his son in law and former ward, William Tecumseh Sherman, was second only to Grant in the final stages of the struggle. Trusted by Lincoln for his advice on matters of public policy as well as upon points of law, it was he who urged upon the President the release of the captured Confederate agents, Mason and Slidell. Indeed, his influence with Lincoln was so great that on many occasions, often to the despair of Cabinet members, he was able to secure from the President pardons or other favors for friends and for clients.

During the winter of 1861-1862, when the Ohio Legislature was considering the choice of a successor to Ben Wade, whose term in the Senate was to expire in 1863, a movement was afoot in favor of Ewing; however, his Democratic and Conservative support was not sufficient to overcome the hostility of the Radicals. Eventually, Wade was re-elected. In 1864, Ewing supported Lincoln's re-election, fearing that the election of McClellan would signal the dissolution of the Union. As hostilities drew to a close, he once again turned to the advocacy of policies of moderation and conciliation. Eventually, he came to be one of President Andrew Johnson's principal advisors. For example, it was upon his advice that Johnson appointed Henry Stanbery, Ewing's former pupil and partner, Attorney General, and O.H. Browning Secretary of the Interior. Not only did he advise Johnson on situations, but he even furnished the President with veto messages. Eventually, he was considered for a Cabinet post. When Stanton was removed as Secretary of War and Lorenzo Thomas was prevented from taking office by Stanton, who barricaded himself in the War Office, it was Ewing's name that Johnson, on February 22, 1868, sent to the Senate for confirmation as Secretary of War. However, Congress and the Nation were in the midst of the impeachment crisis and no action was ever taken on the nomination.

Ewing's conviction that the country must be rescued from the grip of the Radicals, stemming from his dislike for their economic policies, as well as for their reconstruction policies, impelled him to take as active a party as he could in the 1868 campaign. Unable to make speeches himself, the elderly statesman wrote several for his son, General Thomas Ewing, who was campaigning for the Democratic ticket. After the defeat of the Democrats, he continued to give advice, particularly on the Nation's finances. Although he had long been an advocate of the old Whig policy of high protective tariffs, he now saw that such tariffs, instead of protecting infant industries which he had conceived to be for the benefit of the entire country, were insuring to the benefit of a small class of monopoly minded capitalists. He therefore condemned them.

Meanwhile, he continued to devote considerable time and effort to his law practice and to the supervision of his salt works. Winters he still spent in Washington, arguing cases before the Supreme Court. However, old age was rapidly overtaking him. On October 22, 1869, he was stricken while arguing a case before the Supreme Court and for several hours his life was despaired of. Although he recovered and quickly resumed his activities, by the Spring of 1871 a gradual enfeeblement was evident. By October, he was bedfast. Received into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church, the Faith of his beloved wife, Maria, who had passed on in 1864, he breathed his last on October 26, 1871.

He died revered by his family and respected by his colleagues. Nine years of his adult life had been spent in public service. The remainder he had devoted to the practice of law. A self-made man, he had risen to great heights both in the service of his country and in the practice of his chosen profession. The decisions of the Supreme Court were greatly enriched by his arguments. Although his early education had been largely informal, he was noted not only for his knowledge of the law but also for the wide range of his genius which embraced the classics, history, poetry, the arts, architecture, and science -- all of which were arranged and classified in his mind with great order and exactness. Indeed, Daniel Webster once said of him that he was the best informed man he had ever met and that he had never conversed with him for five minutes without being wiser for having done so. The esteem in which he was held at the time of his death was amply attested to by the numerous letters and messages of condolence received by his family, as well as by the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States, in an unusual tribute, devoted several pages of their reports (12 Wallace, vii-ix) to an account of his life.

In land records for Ohio recently made available by the Bureau of Land Management through the Internet, Thomas Ewing, Jr. purchased land in Athens County, OH. Other records with his signature during his tenure as Secretary of the Interior also show that he used the designation "Jr." after his name. Since Thomas' father was named George, it is assumed that he was named Junior after his grandfather, Thomas Ewing.

The following is a letter written by Thomas Ewing to his wife, Maria, after assuming his Senatorial duties in Washington D.C.

(MfVol. 6) Tewing collection, ND

Washington Dec 25 1831

Dear Maria I hesitated some time this morning which I should do - go to church, or stay and write you a long letter - I have at last resolved to stay & write the leter - as I might? I told you in a former letter that I had an invitation to dine with the President - I shingly ___on Tuesday last I _____ to the palace where I was received with much courtesy by the old chief - There were large numbers of Gentlemen there & four or five Ladies of the household in addition who is the mistress of the menagerie. Mr. Jackson, newly married to an adopted son & namesake of the President & two young ladies - neither of them very remarkable for eauty or accomplishments -- respectable however in each particular . We attended at 5 o'clock & it was about half past ten when we sat down to dinner - I had half an hours chat with the ladies (the two married ones, for you know I let the girls alone) but when dinner was announced & I was about to tender my service to one of them, the President requested four of the Old Senators to take charge of the Ladies - & very civily took me under his speciall care -- Well it had to be so you know. I have already told you that the manners of the President are increassssingly fine. For a how dye-do solicitation or a sitting at table chit chat I never met his superior - He is neither wise nor learned nor witty - but his concerns with function & ease on light ond ordinary topicks = matters of every day occurance which everybody knows about & which evey body can think - and then,hie is exceedingly familiear though at the same time sufficiently dignified. - Now and then however, his want of general information will disclose itself. Though not often -- He gave me a seat again & usual next tohim at his right hand - we had an excellent dinner -- fine wine - madiera of choice & very ancient vintage & some first rate champaign - enough to make on a drunken man almost - not quite - This is the first time I have seen Gen Jackson's table graced with the presence of a lady- and at this time too the rich talbe service which I noticed when dining with John Adam, in their day of power was also exhibited - Coffee was handed around very soon after we rose from dinner & the guests took leave -- This is the only dinner, or other party I have attended since I came to Washington - except some dinner,,,ss given by our niece to ssuch of our friends from Ohio as visited Washington & one evening party given by Judge Higgly to some of those Ohio friends - The truth is ( if I do not tell it) I have been extremely industriouss attending to the business of my constitutents, & informing myself upon those subjects that are likely soon to come before the Senate for their action - I make one speech in secret session (of which as the door was closed you will see nothing in the papers_ and I am inclined to think it was well received = It was upon a question of some importance - I spoke in reply to arguments advanced by Bible of Kentucky & a senator from North Carolina - No one spke to the same point on the same side but myself & the vote of the Senate was in accordance with my views --- I received, as I suppose is usual, on a first speech. The congratulation of the Vice President & some of the leading Senators - This however is all between you & me - you have sometimes told me that one of my particular friends makes his wife (good soul) believe he is the greatest man in the world & I have concluded to try the same experiment with mine - I have a very agreeable All temperate, orderly man & attentive to business - Mr. Vinton has a room opposite mine & visits me often - you know of his family misfortunes. He is deeply affected by them though he seems unwilling to ob. .. His sorrows upon others - Last evening , however, he came into my room just before bed time - I had written on a card something to send to Bub which I thought would make him proud. The card had fallen from the table & Vinton came in and picked it yp & asked me something about the boy - I told him what a restless wild ungovernable fellow he was & that notwithstanding that he was his mother's pet. He then spoke of his own family misfortunes - said he had never before been so fully impressed with the feeble & uncertain tenor of human life - that his wife possessed a fine constitution & enjoyed excellent health until a short time before she died - that she ws seized with a bleeding at the lungs & before he was well aware of the danger of her situation she was past remedy. He was himself taken sick soon after. His little boy, a fine sprightly intelligent lad of four years old the image of his mother, was playing about his bed to ____ with - one evening he came and lay down by him and was more than usually talkative - he told him over a dozen of his little adventures & what he would do when he got to be a man - the child became at laast tired & fell asleep - in the night he heard som commotion in the house and inquiring the cause found that his little son was in a fit - one fit after another succeeded & before morning he was a corpse - He has a little daughter left. The only remaining member of his family - These misfortunes have made such an impression on his mind that he cannot, he thinks, ever return to his house again. Everything there whether important or trivial - his room, his furniture - the flowerpots, the garden - all remind him of what he once possessed and what he has lost - He is not ____ in his purpose but seriously thinks leaving Gallipolis and entering another residence -- You comply so punctually with my requests in request in regard to letter writing. That I have great confience in you. Like particularity in other matters - Do you keep your account accurately with the bank so that you know at all times the precise state of your funds. You must not omit that, if you would have the audit of available finances - and as to prompt pay in cash for everying you purchase. You know that was a matter so aabsolutely agreed on between us that I only name it to let you know that I have not changed my mind on the subject - But on the supposition that your finds are beginning to run law I enclose you a check for $50. Which you will send to Mr. Garraghty & have it placed to your creti for it is on the whole rather hard to require you to make heavy payments without giving you a little something to pay with -- and as I have no one-dollar bill I enclose you $3.00 not absolutely for the purpose of paying your winter expenses - but because I happen to have a Lancaster note which is not curent here - so you must not call me old stotley for that -- when you write next or at any rate soon after the receipt of this send me a statement of your cash amounts - I believe I have nothing more to write only I back & tell you of my adventures in crossing the mountains - "By hair breadth es

   Events:

1. Graduation; 1815; Ohio University. ⁷² Thomas and a classmate, John Hunter, received the first B.A. degrees ever granted by Ohio University, or by any University in the Northwest Territory.

2. Education; 1815. ⁷² Studied law in the office of General Philomen Beecher, in Lancaster, Ohio, and was admitted to the bar in 1816.

3. Occupation; 1816. Started his own law practice.

4. Election; 1831-1837. ⁷² Elected on the Whig ticket, to the U.S. Senate and served until 1837. Debated renowned contemporaries as Webster, Clay, and Calhoun.

5. Occupation; 1837-1841; Lancaster, Fairfield Co., OH. ⁷² Returned to Lancaster for four years of distinguished law practice.

6. Appointed; 1841. ⁷² Returned to Washington as Secretary of the Treasury by appointment of President William Henry Harrison.

7. Appointed; 1841. By President Tyler to continue as Secretary of the Treasury.

8. Appointed; 1849; Washington D.C. ⁷² President Zachary Taylor appointed Ewing the first Secretary of the Interior. For many years, Thomas Ewing was the owner and occupant of Blair House, on Pennsylvania Avenue, apposite the White House.

9. Election; 1850-1851. Served in the Senate again.

10. Retirement; 1851. Retired from Public Office and returned to Lancaster, Ohio.

   Marriage Information:

Thomas married Maria Wills BOYLE, daughter of Hugh BOYLE and Eleanor GILLISPIE, on 17 Jan 1819 in Philemon Beecher Home ³⁰. (Maria Wills BOYLE was born on 1 Jan 1801 in Chillicothe, Ohio ³⁰, died in 1864 in Lancaster, Fairfield Co., OH and was buried in St. Mary Cemetery, Lancaster, Ohio.)