William Trimble (1797–1853)

William Trimble, born and trained in the law in Virginia, went to Kentucky to practice and took an assignment from President James Monroe in 1819 to be a prosecutor in the new territory of Arkansas, where he had an episodic political career as a jurist and legislator and a longer one as a private attorney and businessman. In 1824, President James Monroe appointed him to the Superior Court of the territory, the predecessor of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He served for six years.

Records of Trimble’s family and early upbringing are skimpy and contradictory. He was born on April 13, 1797, at Hopewell, Virginia, a few miles east of Richmond, to John Ridgeway and Rachel Ridgeway Trimble, although other references say he was a native of Kentucky. He apparently studied or read law at Hopewell or farther north in Frederick County west of Washington DC.

With his legal credentials, the young man went to Kentucky to practice. After President Monroe signed the act creating the Arkansas territory in 1819, he appointed Trimble as a district attorney for the new territorial government at Arkansas Post. One history of the territorial era said Trimble’s first act in Arkansas was to prepare two indictments for petit larceny, for which he received eight dollars. He ran for a seat in the first territorial legislature but lost.

On November 24, 1821, he married Mirah Lunetta Stuart, a Kentucky native whose family had moved to Hempstead County, where the couple and their children would later move after his judicial career had ended. They had eleven children, although several died in infancy.

In January 1823, he announced his candidacy for the territorial seat in Congress, but three months later he withdrew, saying that he wanted to avoid disharmony. When Judge Joseph Selden, one of the first judges of the territorial Superior Court, was killed in a duel with another judge on May 26, 1824, Monroe appointed Trimble to Selden’s seat two months later.

He served until 1830, when he was either relieved of duties by the president or resigned. In a 1926 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (Myers v. United States) in a dispute over the presidential power to remove executive officers, one justice observed in a concurring opinion that only two territorial judges in America had ever been removed by the president, one of them William Trimble, who was removed on May 20, 1830. The opinion said Trimble had been appointed to a term of four years “unless sooner removed.” President Andrew Jackson appointed Edward Cross to replace Trimble on the court.

Since the first laws of the territory were just being enacted and the judicial system across the remote territory was in its formative stages, the Superior Court dealt mainly with property disputes and rendered few decisions of substantive importance.

One case that attracted considerable attention in the territory was Parker v. Lewis, et al., in 1829, a long-running dispute over property rights between a farmer who claimed damages and two men who had invaded his farm to collect what they viewed as a debt owed by the farmer. A jury awarded the two $10,000, which Trimble judged to be “outrageously and flagrantly excessive.” He said the lawsuit had been long pending, causing much talk and “excitement” in the community, and therefore the jury was “doubtless influenced by public opinion and unconsciously disregarded the evidence.” He ordered a new trial. He noted that the jury had specifically ignored instructions to exclude “the value of the negroes” on the plaintiff’s farm in assessing damages.

Politically, Trimble apparently allied himself with Robert Crittenden, the territorial secretary who fought for power in the territory and the early stages of statehood.

One historian (Josiah Shinn, author of Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas) passed this judgment on Trimble’s judicial career: “We have the authority of Robert Crittenden for saying that no man upon the Superior Court bench made as much money as did Trimble. He was a fine business man, in fact a better business man than a judge, and all his ventures in business were successful. Crittenden said that he left the State in 1832 with about $20,000 in gold. His character was above all reproach, although his legal acumen was not equal to that of either Scott or Johnson.”

In 1831, after leaving the Superior Court, he moved to Hempstead County and was elected to the territorial House of Representatives, which chose him to be speaker. He developed an extensive law practice and acquired and marketed land. In 1842, he was elected to the state Senate and served one four-year term. By 1848, he and his large family had moved to Clarksville City in eastern Texas. He died on January 7, 1853.

For additional information:
“For the Arkansas Advocate.” Arkansas Advocate, June 22, 1831, p. 3.

Foster, Lynn. “Their Pride and Ornament: Judge Benjamin Johnson and the Federal Courts in Early Arkansas.” University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review 22, no. 1 (1999): 21–48. Online at https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview/vol22/iss1/3/ (accessed November 14, 2024).

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

Ross, Frances Mitchell. United States District Courts and Judges of Arkansas, 1836–1960. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2016.

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

Ernest Dumas
Little Rock, Arkansas