"There shall be a Court of Appeals..."
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ON NOVEMBER 8, 1861, Rufus W. Peckham was elected a Justice of the Supreme Court for the Third Judicial District and, in 1866, was designated an ex-officio Judge of the Court of Appeals. In the May 1870 elections for the new Court of Appeals under the 1869 Constitution, he was elected an Associate Judge. He was lost at sea when the Ville du Havre was wrecked on November 22, 1873.

      Thirteen years after his father's election to the Court, on November 6, 1883, Rufus W. Peckham, Jr. was elected Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals. He resigned from the Court on December 3, 1895, when President Cleveland nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

Rufus W. Peckham
COURT OF APPEALS COLLECTION
Rufus W. Peckham, Jr.
COURT OF APPEALS COLLECTION


PREFACE.
      On the morning of the 22d of November, 1873 the steamer Ville Du Havre came in collision with the ship Loche Earne, and sank in mid-ocean. Hon. Rerus W. Peckham, one of the judges of the Court of Appeals, worn out by the arduous and unremitting labors of his office, and hoping to find in change of scene and climate, and in a short respite from his duties; recuperated energies and renewed vigor, had taken passage in that unfortunate steamer; standing upon its deck, encouraging the affrighted ones around him, calmly and bravely he met his fate, and sank into an ocean grave.
      Thus the first vacancy in the new Court of Appeals has been created, and it is deemed appropriate to make this, the first volume published after that sad calamity, in a messure, a memorial volume.
ALBANY, March 10th, 1874.

H. E. SICKELS,
State Reporer.

New York Reports, Volume 53.



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