Henry Adams Bellows (1803 - 1873)
Born at Rockingham (VT); died at Concord (NH).
Lawyer, state legislator, jurist.
Portrait by Adna Tenney, 1873
Presented to the State, 1873.

Bellows was educated at Walpole (NH) schools, and at the academy in Windsor (VT). At twenty years of age (1823) Bellows studied law at the Windsor (VT) office of William C. Bradley, and he was admitted to the Bar at Newfane (VT) several years later.

Bellows set up law practice at Walpole (NH), but in 1828 he moved to Littleton (NH). There he became the leading lawyer, specializing in land title law. He was elected a State Representative from Littleton in 1839.

In 1850 Bellows moved to Concord, where he became a major lawyer known for his painstaking preparation for cases. "It was remarked of him by a brother practitioner, that in consequence of his removal into Merrimack County, the average duration of trail there had increased by one third." (Bell, 114.) He was elected to the State House of Representatives from Concord (1856, 1857), and he served as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

On September 23, 1859 Bellows was selected to fill a vacancy on the New Hampshire Supreme Court. He served as a justice for ten years (1859 - 1869), and in 1869 became Chief Justice. [In the same year Bellows received his LL.D. degree from Dartmouth College.] Bellows served as Chief Justice until his death in 1873.

Reference: Charles H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894), pp. 113-116.