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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Around 1742, Lewis Gordon settled in Philadelphia.1 His name appears first in Pennsylvania’s public records in 1745, when he registered the purchase of land warrants in Bucks County.2 After a stint as a conveyancer, the young Scotsman secured an appointment as a clerk in the law office of Richard Peters.3 Peters served the Penn family as a private councillor, secretary of the land office, and secretary of the Provincial Council,the executive branch of Pennsylvania’s colonial government.4 The most influential men in the colony crossed Peters’s threshold, and Lewis Gordon had the opportunity to brush shoulders with all of them. In 1749 Gordon won admittance to the bar in Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks Counties.That same year he married Mary Jenkins, daughter of a prominent merchant, in Christ Church, a house of worship attended by the city’s Anglican elite.5 In the same year, Gordon became a charter member of the St.Andrew’s Society, a group of twenty-five Scotsmen who aimed to improve the lot of poor Scottish immigrants.6 With the formation of Northampton County in 1752, Peters urged Gordon to sacrifice the comforts of Philadelphia and move to Easton, the seat of the new county, and apply for admission to the bar. Gordon’ s relocation would serve the interests of both men. The Scotsman would benefit as the first resident attorney in the county. Richard Peters would have a trusted ally in place to succeed his longtime friend,William Parsons, the incumbent prothonotaryof Northampton County.7 Since Gordon had no family connections with the elite men who ran colonial Pennsylvania, the prospect of securing a lifetime appointment as a county prothonotary presented him with a rare opportunity, even though it meant that he and his family would have to move to the frontier and take up residence at a ferry landing on the Delaware River. The prothonotary was “the most considerable personage”in the county.8 He served as clerk of common pleas court, quarter sessions court, and orphan ’ s court, as well as county recorder and deputy register of deeds. In addition ,he held a commission as justice of the peace, and served as a judge in common pleas court.9 The prothonotary drew up trial lists, maintained dockets, minutes, and related files, recorded the name of plaintiffs and defendants, and kept track of the amount of judgments rendered, fines and costs paid, and appeals to higher courts.He also maintained a list of jurors and a register of persons to whom he had granted marriage, burial,tavern,and peddler’s licenses. When the prothonotary put pen or seal to paper to execute one of nearly 100 registry transactions, money changed hands. Fees set by the Assembly ranged from a high of four shillings and six pence for issuing a summons to a penny for recording a civil action; however, the volume of work generally enabled the “clerk,”as local inhabitants knew him, to amass a sizable estate.In addition to official duties, the prothonotary provided the Provincial Council with timely information about conditions in his county, and acted as a troubleshooter and personal emissary for his superiors. In June 1752, Lewis Gordon presented himself at the first quarter sessions court in Northampton and gained admittance to the bar. Of twentyseven civil actions registered that day, Gordon filed nine. In the next two meetings of quarter sessions courts, Gordon appeared as attorney in 108 of 160 civil actions.From the beginning, then, many Northampton inhabitants turned to their resident attorney for legal assistance.10 Although it would be 1764 before the Northampton court moved from a tavern to a courthouse, ten years earlier county commissioners had constructed a jail and erected a pillory and whipping post in Easton’ s town square—a conspicuous reminder that law and order would prevail in Northampton. James Egelson and his son, John, numbered among the first to be tied to the post and whipped.Convicted of horse stealing, James Egelson received twenty-one lashes, and his son, nineteen, a sentence so severe that the Pennsylvania Gazettecarried a report of the whipping.“As it seldom happens that parents draw in their children to be accomplices with them in their wickedness,” reads the unsigned account, “the novelty of the occasion drew great numbers of people to be spectators of the punishment. Many of the spectators were affected with pity towards the son, and some showed a good deal of concern...

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