Lyman Bradstreet Walker (1785 - 1858)
Born at Brookfield (MA); died at Gilford (NH).
Lawyer, state legislator/official.
Portrait by unknown artist.
Presented to the State in 1892.

Lyman Walker read law with Gordon Newell (Pittsford, VT) and his brother Phineas Walker (Plymouth, NH). Walker was admitted to the New Hampshire Bar in October 1811. He began to practice law at Gilford (NH).

In 1819 Walker was appointed Solicitor for Strafford County. He held the position for fifteen years (1819/34). He also represented Gilford in the State House of Representatives (1818, 1829). He was appointed to a five-year term as State Attorney General and served 1843/8.

In his earlier years Walker had a large law practice and a good reputation. In his later years Walker "did not attend with equal care to his affairs, his habits deteriorated, and he lost caste", according to Charles H. Bell, author of The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894). This may have been Bell's way of saying that Walker had problems with alcohol in his later years. Bell also notes that Walker was a witty speaker; he attributes this remark about incompetent office-holders to Walker: "When vermin have infected the body politic, the Ides of March [Election Day] never fail to comb them from the political head." (Ibid., p. 711.)

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