Joshua Collett

As printed in 1882

JOSHUA COLLETT.

This distinguished lawyer and Judge was born in Berkeley County, Va. (now West Virginia). November 20, 1781. Having obtained a good English education, he studied law at Martinsburg, in his native county. About the time he reached the age of twenty-one, he emigrated to the Northwest Territory, and stopped temporarily at Cincinnati, where he remained about a year. While he was at Cincinnati, the first constitution of Ohio was adopted and Warren was created a county, with a temporary seat of justice at Lebanon. In June, 1803, before the first court had been held in Warren County, he established himself at Lebanon for the practice of law, and was the first "resident lawyer in the place. Here, it may be said, he commenced the practice of his profession, in which he afterward became distinguished, both at the bar and on the bench. Modest, diffident, unassuming and unpretending, to a degree seldom met with, he had great difficulties to overcome. He traveled the whole of the First Judicial Circuit, comprising the counties of Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont, Montgomery, Miami, Greene and Champaign, and was thus brought into competition with the older and distinguished lawyers of Cincinnati and the bar of the whole Miami Circuit. Notwithstanding the embarrassments resulting from his modesty and diffidence, and the learning and eloquence of his competitors, his knowledge of the law and his sound judgment made him a successful practitioner. In 1807, he was appointed Prosecuting Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit, a position he held for ten years, when he was succeeded by his pupil, Thomas Corwin. The diligence, integrity and ability, with which he discharged the duties of this office, made him widely known and universally respected. In 1817, he was elected by the Legislature, President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the term of seven years, and, at the close of his term, was re-elected. He continued on the Common Pleas Bench until 1829, when he was elected by the Legislature a Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio. His duties as Supreme Judge were onerous; he was compelled to attend courts in distant parts of the State, and to ride on horseback from county to county. At the end of his term, in 1836, he retired to his farm, near Lebanon, where he resided until his death.

After his retirement from the bench, he permitted his name to be placed on the Whig electoral ticket, in 1836, and again in 1840, and, having been elected both times, he twice cast an electoral vote for his friend, Gen. Harrison. He was, for seventeen years, a member of the Board of Trustees of Miami University, and, during all that time manifested an earnest solicitude for the welfare of that institution. He was interested in the cause of education, and held for some time the office of School Examiner in Warren County.

Judge Collett, on emigrating to the West, left in Virginia six brothers and one sister, who, about the year 1812, followed him to Ohio. Their descendants are now numerous in Clinton and Warren Counties. Joshua Collett, in 1808, married Eliza Van Home. William R. Collett, his only son and only child who survived him, was the leading spirit in the organization of the Warren County Agricultural Society. He died on the farm he inherited from his father, July 19, 1860, in the forty-ninth year of his age.

For the last twenty-five years of his life, Judge Collett was a member of the Baptist Church. He was a benevolent and kind-hearted man, and, though an able lawyer and Judge, the crowning glory of his life was his spotless purity, his scrupulous honesty and his unsullied integrity. He died on his farm, near Lebanon May 23, 1855, and was buried at Lebanon. A plain tombstone was erected at the head of his grave, but it is now fallen to the ground, and is broken into several pieces. It bore this inscription:

As printed in The History of Warren County, Ohio (1882). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.