Misplaced Pages

Lemuel G. Brandebury

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
American judge (1810–1875)

Lemuel Green Brandebury (January 1, 1810 – March 10, 1875) was an American judge who in 1851 served as the first chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Utah Territory. He later became a public critic of the Mormon Church and its then practice of polygamy.

Brandebury was from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and had a brother, Rev. C. B. Brandebury. He was a member of the Carlisle, Pennsylvania Bar and worked with C. B. Penrose in Philadelphia.

Brandebury was appointed to the territorial court by President Millard Fillmore on March 12, 1851, after Joseph Buffington declined the position due to insufficient compensation. Brandebury was the first non-Mormon territorial official to arrive, and was honored by a banquet and several dances. Brigham Young described Brandebury as "an inconspicuous lawyer", and despite the initial good relations, Brandebury quickly found himself feeling unwelcome in Utah, returning to Washington with the other non-Mormon members of the territorial government as one of the "Runaway Officials of 1851" to denounce the local government in the territory.

Brandebury did not return to the territory thereafter. Five years later, Young asserted in a speech that Brandebury had been doing odd legal jobs in Washington, D.C., to make a living, and would have fared better had he stayed in the territory.

During the Civil War, Brandebury served in the Engineer Regiment of the West in the Union Army.

He later worked for many years in the Department of the Treasury. In 1875, he died suddenly in Washington, D.C. of apoplexy, aged 65.

Notes

  1. Various sources also spell his last name as Brandenbury, Bradenbury, Bradenburg, or Brandeberg.

References

  1. "Research - Utah State Archives".
  2. ^ Clifford L. Ashton, "Utah: The Territorial and District Courts", chapter 5 in James K. Logan, The Federal Courts of the Tenth Circuit: A History (1992), p. 129-31.
  3. ^ "Mormonism Unmasked". The Sunbury American. Sunbury, Pennsylvania. January 17, 1852. p. 1. Retrieved December 26, 2023.
  4. ^ "Sudden Death". Waynesboro Record. Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. March 25, 1875. p. 2. Retrieved December 26, 2023.
  5. Carter, Clarence Edwin (1972). "The Territorial Papers of the United States: Volumes I-XXVI".
  6. Supreme Court, Utah; Hagan, Albert; Marshall, John Augustine; Zane, John Maxcy; Williams, James A.; Nye, George L.; Tanner, Joseph M.; Thompson, John Walcott; Edler, August B.; Pratt, Harmel L.; Irvine, Alonzo Blair; Dalton, William S.; Arnold Rich, H. (1877). "Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Utah: 1851/1876".
  7. Furniss, Norman F. (2005) . Mormon Conflict: 1850-1859. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11307-5.
  8. Union Soldiers Compiled Service Records, 1861-1865
Political offices
Preceded byNewly established court Justice of the Utah Territorial Supreme Court
1851–1851 		Succeeded byLazarus Reed


Stub icon

This biography of a state judge in Utah is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories: