Jonathan Everett Sargent (1816 - 1890)
Born at New London (NH); died at Concord (NH).
Lawyer, state official and legislator, jurist.
Portrait by U.D. Tenney, 1872.
Presented to the State by Mr. Sargent.

Sargent was the youngest of ten children born to a poor farmer and his wife, and from an early age the children had to be on their own. Sargent worked on the family farm until seventeen years of age (1833). Then he became interested in education, and he arranged with his father that for the next four years, until he was twenty-one, he would earn his own money for room, board, and clothing while he went to school.

Sargent "fitted" (prepared for college) at Hopkinton and Kimball Union Academies, and (1836) entered Dartmouth College. He graduated in the Class of 1840.

During 1838 Sargent was a teacher at Noyes Academy (Canaan, NH); when the old building burned he taught the 1839 academic year at Canaan Union Academy, the new town school school.

Following graduation from Dartmouth College, Sargent read law at the Canaan (NH) law office of Hon. William P. Weeks (1840/1). Then he "went south" to the Washington, D.C. area, to teach school (1841 - summer 1842). While teaching Sargent read law with Hon. David Hall, and he was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar (April 1842).

Sargent did not practice law at Washington, however. He returned instead to Canaan (NH), where he became a law partner with his former mentor, Hon. William P. Weeks. He was admitted to the Sullivan County (NH) Bar (July 1843), and married Mary Jones, of Enfield (NH).

Mr. and Mrs. Sargent moved into a new house at Canaan (NH) on Thanksgiving Day, 1843. For the next four years (1843/7) Sargent and Weeks continued as law partners. Then (June 1847) the Sargents moved to Wentworth (NH), where Sargent practiced law for the next twenty-two years (1847 - 1869). He was appointed Solicitor for Grafton County (NH), and served for ten years (1844/54).

The citizens of Wentworth elected Sargent to the State House of Representatives three times (1851, 1852, 1853), and in 1854 Sargent was elected to the State Senate, where he was made President of the Senate. In 1855 the Know-Nothing Party, campaigning against continued immigration (primarily of Irish Catholics), swept the New Hampshire political scene. Governor Ralph Metcalf shared many of the Know-Nothing views, but he recognized Sargent's abilities; when Sargent lost his post as Solicitor for Grafton County in the political upheaval, Governor Metcalf appointed Sargent an Associate Justice in the Court of Common Pleas. Sargent held this position for four years (July 1855 - July 1859).

In 1859 the Court of Common Pleas was abolished by the Legislature. A new State Supreme Judicial Court was created, and Sargent was appointed an Associate Justice of this new entity.

Sargent served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court 1859 - 1873. In 1873 he was named Chief Justice; but in 1874 the Democrats carried the State House and the Legislature, and Governor Weston and his Democratic supporters redid the Republican patronage system to reward their followers. County sheriffs and other longtime political fixtures were summarily dismissed, and replaced with Democrats. As part of the house cleaning, the Supreme Judicial Court was abolished (August 1874).

Former Chief Justice Sargent and his family moved to Concord (NH). Sargent went into law practice with Hon. William M. Chase. He became President of the Loan & Trust Savings Bank, Grand Master of the Masons, and wrote historical addresses and articles. Sargent was an officer of the New Hampshire Historical Society; he was a member of the New Hampshire Constitutional Convention (1876), and chaired the (1878) Commission to revise the Laws of New Hampshire. He died January 6, 1890.

Reference: William A. Wallace (ed. James B. Wallace) The History of Canaan, New Hampshire (1910); John M. Comstock, Obituary Record of the Graduates of Dartmouth College...for the year ending at Commencement 1890 (1890); Charles H. Bell, The Bench and Bar of New Hampshire (1894).