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1. The Judgment of Heaven on a Country
- University of Missouri Press
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cottish-born Thomas Ewing, the first of several Thomas Ewings of America, settled in Greenwich, New Jersey, just before the Revolutionary War. Although Ewing’s ancestry was traceable to Cadet Finley Colquhoun, an Orangeman allied with William of Orange in at the Battle of the Boyne, a century later during the American Revolutionary War Thomas’s son, George Ewing, distinguished himself at Brandywine as a common soldier leading a section of artillery . George mustered out of the Continental army a dirt-poor captain who sold his inheritance to make ends meet. Destitute, like many new Americans the soldiers found fortune and a life in the West—the West at that time being western Virginia. George Ewing moved his family to a dirt farm in West Liberty, although some of his relatives complained that he “read too much” to become a good farmer. In the Founding Fathers were crafting the Constitution, with its slavery compromises prompting delegate George Mason to predict that the institution in America was a “slow poison,” which would in time bring the “judgment of heaven on a country” where great sins would be punished with “national calamities.” Two years later, a second Thomas Ewing in Finley Colquhoun’s line was born. In George Ewing moved on, taking his young family further west, to Lancaster in central Ohio. This is where the family’s meandering ended.1 . Hugh B. Ewing, “Autobiography of a Tramp,” . Mason’s “judgment of heaven” speech to the 1 THE JUDGMENT OF HEAVEN ON A COUNTRY S Lancaster at the time was not much more than a fortified stockade to deter marauding Indian bands. In politics George Ewing embraced federalism. Like the politics of the time, factionalism was taken seriously and could be virulent. When Aaron Burr happened to visit Lancaster in , the young Thomas Ewing saw George Ewing being uncharacteristically rude to the former vice president. Only after the stranger left did the boy learn Burr’s role in the dueling death of Alexander Hamilton. By day Thomas Ewing labored on his father’s farm and taught himself to read. Indeed he read books so rapidly that the family suspected some sort of genius within him. He was among the first American college graduates west of the Alleghenies . In Thomas was admitted to the Bar after studying with Philemon Beecher. When “Pa” Beecher went to Congress in , Thomas Ewing began a renowned legal career. He was first a local prosecutor before building his civil practice in real estate law. While lawyers helped the less fortunate through pro bono cases, his important efforts were reserved for cases involving men of business. In January Thomas Ewing was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.2 A patient man, he approached all things methodically. In he had to find a way to bridge the chasm between his own Presbyterianism and the Roman Catholicism of Maria Boyle, the daughter of the local court clerk and the woman he wanted to marry. He tolerated Catholicism because she demanded it of him. In return she bore him seven children, over seventeen years, all in the big house at High and Main streets in Lancaster. Three of his children became strong Catholics like Maria. Eleanor was known as Ellen to the family. Hugh, the second youngest boy, was a scrapper throughout his young life.Their daughter Maria eventually led a Catholic nunnery. Tom Jr. took on more of his father’s deist ways. The oldest and the youngest were boys: Philemon and Charles, respectively. Furthermore , Thomas and Maria also raised three children of Ewing’s sister Rachel, and a second cousin, Lewis Wolfley. For Thomas Ewing Sr. the phrase “devoted family man” was an understatement. In addition Thomas Ewing took into his home nine-year-old Tecumseh Sherman , the sixth child of their neighbors Charles and Mary Sherman.The Shermans were also Revolutionary War refugees and had immigrated to Ohio after British Constitutional Convention, August , . See, generally, Robert Rutland, The Papers of George Mason, ; Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of , Reported by James Madison (New York: W. W. Norton, ). . The information for this and the next few paragraphs is taken from Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Thomas Ewing Sr. Papers, . THOMAS EWING JR. [3.94.102.228] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:15 GMT) Tories burned them out of colonial Connecticut. Charles Sherman had a small law practice that he was using to pay off debts from ill-timed efforts as a state tax...