As a member of the legal profession, both on the Bench and at the Bar, as the chief magistrate of the city, and as an United States revenue officer, and as a citizen of Cleveland, Samuel Starkweather has held honorable prominence for forty years.

He was born in the village of Pawtucket, Massachusetts, on the border of Rhode Island, a village celebrated as the seat of the first cotton manufactures in the United States. He was the son of the Honorable Oliver Starkweather, an extensive and successful manufacturer, and grandson of the Honorable Ephraim Starkweather, who was prominent among the patriots of the Revolution.

The subject of this sketch worked on a farm until nearly seventeen years of age, when he began to fit himself for college, after which he entered Brown University, Rhode Island, where he graduated with the second honors of his class, in the year 1822, and was soon afterward elected a tutor in that institution, which position he held until the year 1824, when he resigned, to commence the study of the law, which he pursued in the office of Judge Swift, in Windham, Connecticut, and afterwards in attendance upon the lectures of Chancellor Kent, of New York. He was admitted to the Bar of Ohio at Columbus, in the Winter of 1826-7, and soon after settled in Cleveland, then a village of a few hundred inhabitants, and was recognized as a lawyer of learning and ability in this and the adjoining counties.

Mr. Starkweather was prominent among the leaders of the Democratic party of this State, when its principles were well defined, and was a strong adherent to the administrations of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren, but his being always in the political minority in the part of the State in which he lived, prevented those high political preferments which otherwise would have been conferred upon him. In this connection it is proper to say, that for Mr. Starkweather to have attained the highest eminence in the legal profession, it was only necessary that he should have made it his specialty.

Under the administrations of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren, Mr. Starkweather held the office of Collector of Customs of this District, and Superintendent of Light-Houses, and under his supervision most of the sites were purchased, and the light-houses erected on the Southern shore of Lake Erie. He continued to hold these offices in connection with his practice of the law, until 1840.

In 1844, Mr. Starkweather was elected Mayor of the city of Cleveland, having previously taken a leading part in the City Councils. He was re-elected in 1845, and was again elected Mayor in 1857, for two years, and in these positions was active in promoting those improvements in the city which have tended to its prosperity and beauty. To Mr. Starkweather the public schools of the city are much indebted for the interest which he has always taken in their behalf; and to his advocacy and efforts, with those of Mr. Charles Bradburn, the High School of the city owes its first establishment.

In the early struggles for advancing the schemes of railroads, the accomplishment of which has made Cleveland the great city of commerce and manufactures, no one was more active than Mr. Starkweather. When the project of building the Cleveland & Columbus road was at a stand-still, and was on the point of being, for the time, abandoned, as a final effort a meeting of the business men of Cleveland was called. The speech of Mr. Starkweather on that occasion, parts of which are quoted to this day, had the effect to breathe into that enterprise the breath of life, and from that meeting it went immediately onward to its final completion. So well were the services of Mr. Starkweather in behalf of that road appreciated at the time, that one of the Directors proposed that he should have a pass upon it for life.

Mr. Starkweather, in 1852, was the first Judge elected to the Court of Common Pleas for Cuyahoga county, under the new constitution of the State, in which position he served for five years with ability and satisfaction to the members of the Bar and the public generally. For a considerable portion of his term, the entire docket of both civil and criminal business devolved on Mm, when an additional Judge was allowed the county. He presided at some very important State trials, in which, as in the disposition of a very large amount of civil business, he exhibited abundant legal learning and judicial discrimination.

Since he retired from the Bench he has been known as a citizen of wealth, of retired habits, but of influence in public affairs, and retaining to the full the conversational gifts which have made him the life and charm of social and professional circles. Indeed it may be said that either at the Bar, in well remembered efforts of marked brilliancy as an advocate, or on the Bench, occasionally illuminating the soberness of judicial proceedings, or in assemblies on prominent public occasions occurring all through his life, eloquence, wit and humor seemed ready to his use. A fine belle lettres scholar, classical, historical and biographical adornments and incidents seemed always naturally to flow in to enrich his discourse, whether in private or public. He has often been spoken of as of the Corwin cast, perhaps a slight personal resemblance aiding the suggestion. He certainly has the like gifts of the charming conversationalist and the popular orator, in which last capacity, for many years, he was the prompt choice of the public on leading occasions, such as at the grand reception given to Van Buren after his defeat in 1840; the magnificent reception tendered by the city to Kossuth; at the completion of the Cleveland & Columbus Railway on the 22nd of February, 1852; at the dedication of Woodland Cemetery, and at many other times when the public were most anxious to put a gifted man forward.

[Illustration: Truly Yours, Moses Kelly]