" This truly estimable and learned jurist, who has recently passed off the stage of life, at the advanced age of eighty-five years, is deserving of the highest tribute of respect that can be paid to his memory by the living generation. His name is a connecting link between two centuries, of which the eighteenth claimed his boyhood, and the nineteenth his youth, manhood and old age. Around both epochs his numerous virtues have shed an undying charm. Louisiana will never forget one who was a denizen of her territory five years before she became a State, and who, through al the mutations of politics, was an unflinching advocate of her sovereignty and her honor. New Orleans, with whose interests his own ere identified, from the time it was a village till it became the great and flourishing city it now is, where he acquired solid and enduring fame and an ample fortune, in his capacity of an able advocate and a learned counselor, has equal cause to remember the venerable sage, who, by his wisdom, energy and lofty example, has shed lustre on her history.
This distinguished personage was born in Maryland, A. D. 1786. He pursued his collegiate course of studies at Yale College, where he graduated with distinction in the twentieth year of his age. Piously trained by excellent parents, the religious element of his nature was fully developed at the early age of sixteen years, when he became, by open profession, a member of the Presbyterian Church, to which he was ardently attached and of which he was a Ruling Elder for nearly half a century, having been raised to that influential position by regular ordination in the year 1828, according to the forms of that church. "His name," says Dr. Palmer, in the eloquent discourse of that distinguished divine, delivered on the occasion of his death, "heads the list of the original twenty-four, who, in the month of November 1823, were organized, according to our ecclesiastical canons, into the First Presbyterian church of New Orleans."
In his youth he was inclined to adopt the ministry as his profession, but subsequently shrank from its lofty responsibilities, and, on his graduation, determine on the study of the law, which he commenced and prosecuted for a couple of years at New haven under the direction of Judge Chauncey. (portions of this biography omitted for brevity)... For about twenty years he was an able and efficient Director of the old Bank of Louisiana, during its days of prosperity.