Jameson

of the home county and with membership in the
constitutional convention of Vermont (1850).
In the accumulation of earthly possessions the
parents, in spite of their traditional frugality
and thrift, were not very successful, and it was
only under the most severe hardships and sac-
rifices that the son was able to secure an educa-
tion. His final preparation for college was com-
pleted in Brownington, and he entered the Uni-
versity of Vermont in 1842, originally intending
to prepare for the ministry in conformity with
the desires of his parents. He was graduated in
1846 at the head of his class. After teaching
for four years in an academy at Stanstead, Can-
ada, he returned to the University of Vermont
and spent two years there as tutor. During these
same years he earned the degree of master of
arts (1849), read extensively in many fields,
and began to concentrate his interests on the
study of law. Before entering the Harvard Law
School in the autumn of 1852, he spent a few
months in the law office of Governor Underwood
in Burlington. In the spring of 1853 he re-
sumed his tutoring while he was making the final
preparation for his admission to the Vermont
bar.

In the autumn of 1853 he went to Chicago and
began the practice of law with H. N. Hibbard
as his partner. In the winter the firm moved to
Freeport, 111., in search of a more lucrative field.
On Oct. ii, 1855, he married Eliza, daughter of
Dr. Joseph A. Denison, Jr., of Royalton, Vt,
descendant of Capt. George Denison of Ston-
ington, Conn. He reestablished his law office in
Chicago in 1856 and practised with cumulative
success until he was elected to a judgeship on
the superior court of Chicago (later of Cook
County) in 1865. On the chancery division of
this court he served for three successive terms
covering a period of eighteen years. His tem-
perament, traditions, and scholarship made him
preeminently qualified for the equity field, and
to him came the rare distinction of having vir-
tually all of his decisions from which appeals
were taken confirmed by the higher courts. In
what was probably his most famous case his de-
cision was reversed by the supreme court of Illi-
nois in 1871 (Samuel Chase et al. vs. Charles E.
Cheney, 58 III., 509), but the principles of law
which were the basis of his reasoning ultimately
prevailed.

In 1867 appeared his monumental work on
The Constitutional Convention; Its History,
Powers, and Modes of Proceeding. He was
moved to make this exhaustive and scholarly
study, as he explains in the preface, by certain
claims made in the constitutional convention of

Jamison

Illinois in 1862 that the convention had inherent
powers amounting to absolute sovereignty, and
by certain rumors that a secret group hostile to
the Union was trying to control the convention.
His contribution was the first comprehensive
treatise on the subject and, as far as it is possible
in such a field, a definitive one; it received gen-
eral recognition. The old University of Chicago
made him a professor of equity and constitu-
tional law for the year 1867-68. He resumed
the private practice of law in 1883 and was con-
spicuously successful. In 1888 he was elected
president of the board of trustees of Hyde Park,
the suburb in which he lived with his wife, his
two daughters, and his son. His interests were
much wider than his profession. He taught his
son the Greek and Latin necessary to admit him
to college; he gave addresses from time to time,
some of them in fluent German; he wrote many
articles and was an assistant editor of the Amer-
ican Law Register. He was also active in the
founding and maintenance of the Literary Club
of Chicago, the Prisoner's Aid Association of
Illinois, and the American Academy of Social
and Political Science. He collected the material
which now constitutes the John Alexander
Jameson Library in American History in the
University of Pennsylvania. A Republican, he
refrained, however, from political activity. His
death occurred in Hyde Park.

[E. 0. Jameson, The Jamesons in America (1901);
Gen. Cat. of the Univ. of Vt. . . . i/pi-ipoo (1901);
F. N. Thorpe, In Memoriam: John Alexander Jameson
(1890), supp. to Annals Am. Acad. Pol. and Social Sci.>
Jan. 1891; Chicago Law Times, Oct. 1888; Chicago
Legal News, June 21, 1890; Chicago Tribunet June 17,
l89°-] AJ.L.

JAMISON, CECILIA VIETS DAKIN

HAMILTON (i837-Apr. u, 1909), artist and
author,daughter of Viets and Elizabeth (Bruce)
Dakin, great-grand-daughter of Rev. Roger
Viets, vicar general of Canada, and great-niece
of Rt Rev. Alexander Viets Griswold [g.v.],
was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and lived
there until she was in her mid-teens, at which
time the family moved to Boston. She was edu-
cated in private schools in Canada, New York,
Boston, and Paris; her early ambition was to be
an artist, and she received the best instruction
America afforded. While working in a studio
in Boston, she met, and later married, George
Hamilton. Regarding this first marriage noth-
ing more is known; shortly after it took place,
Mrs. Hamilton, then in her late twenties, went
to Europe for further study in portrait painting,
and lived for three years in Rome. Writing had
been only a favorite avocation with her up to
this time, but while she was in Rome, the poet

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