Charles Jouett (1772?–1834)

Charles Jouett of Virginia, Michigan, and Kentucky rose to brief prominence in Arkansas in 1819, shortly after President James Monroe signed an act of Congress creating the Territory of Arkansas. Monroe appointed his friend Jouett to be the first official of the new territorial government—judge of the Superior Court of Arkansas, the predecessor of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, which was established when Arkansas was granted statehood in 1836. Actually, Jouett, one of three men whom Monroe appointed to the Superior Court, spent only a few weeks on Arkansas soil, if that, although he would be credited with helping set up the territorial government in the summer and fall of 1819 at Arkansas Post, the original capital at the confluence of the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers. The editor of the Arkansas Gazette would maintain that Jouett never set foot in the Arkansas Territory, although official records suggest that he did, though briefly.

Charles Jouett was the youngest of nine children of John Jouett Sr. and Mourning Glenn Harris Jouett, born in or near Charlottesville, Virginia. His exact birth date was never established, although scholars concluded that he had to have been born no earlier than 1771 and probably 1772. His father ran the Swan Tavern at Charlottesville. Charles’s twenty-seven-year-old elder brother, John “Jack” Jouett Jr., was famous for a legendary forty-mile ride on horseback on the night of June 3, 1781, from a tavern in Louisa County to Charlottesville to warn the legislature and the colonial government that the British cavalry under Lieutenant Banastre Tarleton was headed their way, allowing the legislature and the outgoing governor, Thomas Jefferson, to escape. Among those Jouett saved from capture, in addition to Jefferson, were Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, signers of the Declaration of Independence. Jack Jouett would later be honored by the legislature for his heroic ride.

Jack and two other older brothers of Charles Jouett fought in the Revolutionary War, one badly wounded at Eutaw Springs and another dying after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. After the war, Charles served in the Second Division of the Forty-seventh Regiment of the Virginia Militia. He studied law and became a member of the Albemarle bar in 1798. In 1802, President Jefferson’s secretary of war, Henry Dearborn, appointed Charles to manage treaties with native tribes in the northwestern territories from Chicago to Detroit. He conducted census surveys on native populations and reported to the government, operating from forts at Detroit, Chicago, and Dearborn, Michigan. He was a judge on the Mercer County, Kentucky, bench from 1812 to 1815.

Soon after arriving at his assignment as an Indian agent at Fort Detroit in January 1803, Jouett married Eliza Dodemead. It was six months before the Louisiana Purchase, which included territory that eventually became Arkansas. A relative of Jefferson wrote a letter to Jefferson in 1805 recommending that he appoint Jouett to be governor of the new territory of Michigan, which thirty-one years later would join the union matched with the slave state of Arkansas.

Jouett gained some renown as the agent who negotiated treaties with many Native American tribes. His treaty with the Ottawa, Potawatomi, Chippewa, Wyandot, Munsee, Delaware, and Shawnee in 1805 decreed that the tribes “shall be at liberty to fish and hunt within the territory and lands which they have now ceded to the United States, so long as they shall demean themselves peaceably.”

Jouett’s first wife, Eliza, died in 1805 at Fort Dearborn. Four years later, he married Susan Randolph Allen of Kentucky. Jouett had one son with his first wife and three children with his second.

He was an Indian agent at Chicago in 1818 and moved to Mercer County, Kentucky. On March 3, 1819, President Monroe appointed him and two other lawyers to be judges of the Superior Court of the Territory of Arkansas and directed them to form a legislative body, along with the territorial governor whom he was appointing, James Miller, to set up the government of the territory. Miller was delayed for many weeks in reaching Arkansas, so the territorial secretary, Robert Crittenden, took the governor’s place, and the four men and perhaps a few others held a legislative session that lasted seven days. It passed bills dividing Arkansas into two circuits for administering justice, passed an act providing that all laws in force in Missouri would apply to the Arkansas Territory, created the offices of auditor and treasurer, and fixed their salaries at $300 a year.

There was speculation in a subsequent history, and also in the Gazette at the time, that Jouett might never have set foot in Arkansas and that, at any rate, he never performed any judicial duties. Territorial records do reflect that he took an oath as a Superior Court judge, but he never participated in a case before the court. Only one of the court’s three judges did—Andrew Scott, who wrote all the opinions of the court for the first year or more. Until statehood in 1836, all the court’s decisions dealt with settling disputes, principally about property.

The little that is known about Jouett’s brief sojourn suggests that he was not enamored with the rustic civilization and wilderness beyond the Mississippi River, particularly the climate, and got out fast, never to return. The Gazette and historical documents recorded that he had been indicted by a grand jury soon after he departed because he had performed no duties as a judge but had received the compensation of the presidential appointment.

On July 15, 1820, a grand jury issued a presentment against Jouett, who by then had clearly left the territory, leaving suggestions that it was because of the unhealthiness of the region. The grand jury’s presentment said he was guilty of “total delinquency.” It said that Jouett had held the job “for more than twelve months…without having taken his seat on the bench,” which was “intolerable to be borne in civilized society.” William E. Woodruff wrote in the Gazette: “It is still remembered here that last spring Judge Jouett was driven from the territory by a swarm of mosquitoes, at the mouth of the White river, while on his way to this place, and within eighteen miles of his destination.”

Jouett settled in Trigg County, Kentucky, with his second wife and children. He became ill at the home of a friend while he was en route to Lexington and died on May 28, 1834. He was buried in the yard of his friend’s home.

For additional information:
Hempstead, Fay. A Pictorial History of the State of Arkansas from Earliest Times to 1890. St. Louis, MO: N. D. Thompson Publishing Company, 1890.

Hurlbut, Henry Higgins. Chicago Antiquities: Comprising Original Items and Relations, Letters, Extracts, And Notes Pertaining to Early Chicago. Chicago, IL: 1881. Online at https://archive.org/details/chicagoantiquiti00hurl/mode/2up (accessed November 8, 2024).

“Judge’s Commission, 109 Years Old, Given Martineau.” Arkansas Gazette, April 20, 1928, p. 13.

Shinn, Josiah Hazen. Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas. Little Rock: Genealogical and Historical Publishing Company, 1908.

“Today Is Arkansas’s 100^th Birthday.” Arkansas Gazette, July 4, 1919, p. 6.

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas