Hitchcock

Etchings by American Artists (1886); Ma-
donnas by Old Masters (1888); Some American
Painters in Water Colors (1890). In entirely
different vein he wrote Thomas De Quincey, a
Study (1899), also published as the introduction
to an edition of Confessions of an English Opium
Eater; The Louisiana Purchase and the Ex-
ploration, Early History and Building of the
West (1903) ; and The Lewis and Clark Expe-
dition (1905), the last two coinciding somewhat
closely with the great expositions held in cele-
bration of the anniversaries of those events. He
edited and wrote descriptive matter for several
volumes of art reproductions, the most note-
worthy being The Art of the World, Illustrated
in the Paintings, Statuary and Architecture of
the World's Columbian Exposition (1894). In
the course of his editorial career he prepared for
the press The Life of an Artist (1890), by Jules
Breton; The Last Words of Thomas Carlyle
(1892); The Story of the West series (1895-
1902), comprising The Story of the Indian, The
Story of the Mine, The Story of the Cowboy, The
Story of the Railroad, The Story of the Soldier,
and The Story of the Trapper, each with an in-
troduction by the editor; Recollections, Personal
and Literary (1903), by Richard Henry Stod-
dard; The Trail-Makers; a Library of History
and Exploration (1904-05); Decisive Battles of
America (1909), by Albert Bushnell Hart,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and others; and
the monumental Documentary Edition (1918) of
Woodrow Wilson's History of the American
People. At a dinner given by his father-in-law,
Charles Sargent, to a visiting party of French
soldiers on May 4, 1918, Hitchcock was stricken
by heart failure and died within a few minutes.
He was married twice: in 1883, to Martha Wol-
cott Hall of Springfield, Mass., who died in 1903;
and in 1914 to Helen Sanborn Sargent of New
York, herself a prominent educator and art-
worker, who survived him.

{Who's Who in America t 1918-19; Harvard College
Class of 1877, sixth and seventh reports (1902, 1917) J
M. L. J. Hitchcock, The GeneaL of the Hitchcock Fam-
ily (1894); N. Y. newspapers of May 5, 1918; private
sources.] A.F.H.

HITCHCOCK, PETER (Oct. 19, i78i-Mar.
4> 1833), Ohio jurist, the youngest son of Valen-
tine Hitchcock and his wife Sarah, daughter of
Henry Hotchkiss, was born at Cheshire, Conn.
He was fifth in descent from Matthias Hitch-
cock who came to Boston from London in 1635.
Entering Yale at the age of seventeen and teach-
ing at intervals to defray his expenses, Peter
graduated in 1801. Following graduation he
studied law, was admitted to practice in March
1803 (20 Ohio Reports, Lawrence, v-vii), and

Hitchcock

opened an office in Cheshire. Attracted by the
opportunities of the West, he took his wife, Nab-
by Cook, whom he had married Dec. 12, 1805,
and in June 1806 journeyed to the new state of
Ohio in an ox-drawn wagon. Near Burton,
Geauga County, he settled upon an unimproved
farm which was thenceforth his home. Clearing
the land and teaching in Burton Academy were
his chief occupations for a time, but in such legal
business as came to him he displayed a mind so
accurate, logical, and resourceful that his cli-
entele grew rapidly. These traits, together with
simple honesty and modesty, made him a man of
influence throughout the Western Reserve be-
fore he had been five years in the state.

In 1810 his neighbors sent him to the legis-
lature, where he served, first in the lower house,
then in the upper, until 1816. During his last
session he presided over the Senate. In 1816 he
was elected to Congress, but before the end of his
term was chosen (1819) by the Ohio legislature
as judge of the state supreme court. He sat
upon the bench for four seven-year terms, failing
of reelection in 1833 and 1842 because of the con-
trol of the legislature by his political opponents.
From 1833 to 1835 he was again in the Senate,
and in 1845 he began his final term in the su-
preme court, which he lacked a week of complet-
ing when the new constitution, providing for
popular election of judges, retired him. During
six of the twenty-eight years, including the last
three, he had been chief judge.

Originally a Jeifersonian Republican, Hitch-
cock became a Whig during Jackson's presidency
through devotion to what he conceived to be the
fundamentals of popular government. The trend
of his thought is indicated by the fact that as a
member of the constitutional convention of 1850
he himself advocated the provision which de-
prived him, a trifle prematurely, of his office;
and also by his opposition to the executive veto
as an unwarranted check upon the acts of the
people's representatives. Up to the time of his
retirement from the bench he had enjoyed robust
health and great physical and mental endurance,
but early in 1853, as he returned from a visit to
Columbus on professional business, he was seized
with dysentery, and died at the home of a son in
Painesville. Hitchcock exhibited the traditional
virtues of his Puritan stock—sobriety, industry,
and integrity. In middle life he united with the
Congregational Church. As a jurist he ranks
high among those who have served Ohio. His
was the task of an original mind confronting the
inchoate jurisprudence of a frontier community.
He had little reverence for rules and precedents
established under unlike conditions, but sought

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