Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1886 — DAVID DAVIS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DAVID DAVIS.

Ex-Justice of the Supreme Court and Ex-United States Senator. The venerable Judge David Davis has recently been suffering from malignant carbuncle, so that death was at one time expected. We are glad to learn, however, that he is recovering, with a prospect of complete restoration to health.

David Davis was bom in Cecil County, on the eastern shore of Maryland, on March 9, 1815. His family was of Welsh extraction, and had first settled in that region early in the last century. He was an only child. He received his educational training at Kenyon College, Ohio,, where he graduated in 1832. From college he went directly to the Harvard Law School, and as soon as he finished the course there removed to the West and settled in Bloomington, HL, where he was admitted to the bar in 1835, and commenced at once the practice of his profession. He was soon brought into public life, and as early as 1814 was elected a Representative in the State Legislature. In 1847 he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and a year later was elected a Judge of one of the Circuit Courts of Illinois. This office he held by repeated elections until he finally resigned it in 1862, when he was appointed by President Lincoln a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. He remained on the Supreme Bench until March 5, 1877, when he resigned to take his seat in the United States Senate, to which office he had been elected by the Democrats and Independents in the Illinois Legislature. During his service as United States Senator he maintained strict independence and allied himself with the organization of neither party in that legislative body. He was elected presiding officer of the Senate soon after Vice President Arthur assumed the duties of a higher office following the death of President Garfield, and continued to hold this position up to the expiration of his term of office in 1883, when he was succeeded by Senator Cullom. Soon after his retirement trom the Senate Judge Davis married, and he has since been living very quietly at his home in Bloomington, 111. “There is a perfect rage,” says the London Queen, “for wearing flowers in the hair. Flower aigrettes are the fashion for the moment, and all other forms of ornament are at a proportionate discount. A tuft of osprey is introduced among the natural blooms, and owners of single diamonds have an opportunity of displaying them as drw-drops sparkling on freshly gathered roses or lilies. On the corsage, too, large sprays of flowers and foliage are arranged, and long, rich trails ornament the akurt.