Ephraim Geoffrey Peyton Biography - Mississippi Genealogy Trails

Ephraim Geoffrey Peyton

Courts, Judges, and Lawyers of Mississippi, 1798-1935, By Dunbar Rowland, B.S., LL.B., LL.D., Press of Hederman Press, Jackson, Mississippi, 1935, pg97

Ephraim Geoffrey Peyton was born near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, October 29, 1802. When 17 he came, with an elder brother, to Mississippi, and worked in a printing in Natchez office for a short time. Later he taught school and read law in Wilkinson county, near Woodville, until the winter of 1824-25, when he examined at Natchez and admitted to the bar. He began his practice at Gallatin, then the county-seat of Copiah County, and soon established a mercantile business at Grand Gulf on the Mississippi in addition to his law practice. About 1830, he married Artemisia Patton, of Claiborne county. In 1839, he was elected district attorney of what was then the 4^th judicial district, and was reelected several times, finally resigning to return to his general practice. As he was a pronounced Whig, his election in this strongly Democratic district was a well merited compliment to his ability and his reputation for integrity. He bitterly opposed secession, and after the war, became a Republican. In 1867 he was appointed to the supreme court (then the high court of errors and appeals) by the military authorities; and on the reorganization of the judiciary by the Constitution of 1869, he was commissioned, May 10, 1870, as chief justice, and reappointed in 1873 for nine years, but resigned May 1, 1876, and died at Jackson, September 5, 1876, honored by his associates. “His opinions as a judge are of the finest type,” wrote Edward Mayes. He was such a close student that A. G. Brown said that for fifty years he studied law each day as it he expected to be examined for the bar the next day. In his message of January 1877, Governor John M. Stone mentioned his death in the following tribute: “In justice to the worth and memory of one who was for many years an honored and conscientious public servant, and eminent jurist and a man of incorruptible integrity, who discharged the duties of the exalted and responsible position with honor to himself and the State.”