Damon G. Tunnicliff Explained

Damon G. Tunnicliff
Birth Name:Damon George Tunnicliff
Birth Date:20 August 1829
Birth Place:Herkimer County, New York
Death Place:Macomb, Illinois
Occupation:Jurist
Children:9, including Helen Tunnicliff Catterall, Sarah Bacon Tunnicliff, and Ruth May Tunnicliff
Office:Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois
Term Start:February 1885
Term End:June 1885
Relations:Ralph T. Catterall (grandson)

Damon George Tunnicliff (August 20, 1829  - December 20, 1901) was an American jurist. He briefly served as a justice of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1885.

Biography

Damon G. Tunnicliff was born in Herkimer County, New York. At age fifteen, he went to live with his uncle in Cleveland, and in 1849, he moved to Vermont, Illinois to run a store for his cousin.[1]

After successfully acting as his own attorney in trials for two traffic offenses there, he read law at a firm in Rushville, and was admitted to the bar in April 1853. He began practicing law in Macomb, Illinois in 1854, and later that year he became an attorney for the Northern Cross Railroad. He remained in that position for 47 years.[1]

He married Mary Elizabeth Bailey on January 11, 1855, and they had six children. She died in 1865, and he remarried to Sarah Alice Bacon on November 4, 1868. They had three daughters: lawyer and law historian Helen Tunnicliff Catterall, clubwoman and reformer Sarah Bacon Tunnicliff, and medical researcher Ruth May Tunnicliff.[1]

From February to June 1885, Tunnicliff served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Illinois.[2] [3]

He died in Macomb on December 20, 1901.[4]

Notes and References

  1. Book: The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography . XVIII . James T. White & Company . 194–195 . 1922 . 2020-12-28 . Google Books.
  2. Web site: Damon G. Tunnicliff . . 2020-12-28.
  3. Book: The Green Bag . 1891 . III . Horace W. . Fuller . Horace W. Fuller . The Boston Book Company . 236 . 2020-12-28 . Google Books.
  4. News: Obituary: Judge Damon G. Tunnicliff . . 4 . 1901-12-21 . 2020-12-28 . Newspapers.com.