Chancellor PVillard Saulsbury.
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CHANCELLOR WILLARD SAULSBURY. HON. WILLARD SAULSBURY, Chancellor of the State of Dela ware, died at his home in Dover on April 6, 1892. His sudden death, the cause of which was apoplexy, was a great shock to the people of that State, in the affairs of which for nearly fifty years he had been prominent. He was born in Misspillion Hundred, in the southwestern part of Kent County, Delaware, near the Maryland State line, on June 2, 1820. William Saulsbury, his father, was a man of strong character, sterling worth, and commanding influence in the community where he lived. His mother, Margaret Saulsbury, was a daughter of Cap tain Thomas Smith. She was a most exem plary woman and possessed great mental power, a marked characteristic of her dis tinguished son, two of whose brothers, the late Dr. Gove Saulsbury, Governor of Dela ware, and Hon. Eli Saulsbury, a senator in Congress of the United States from 1871 to 1889, also attained national reputation. The Saulsbury family is of Welsh descent, having come to this country in the seven teenth century, since which time they have held lands in Dorchester County, Maryland, a part of which, including the farm upon which Willard Saulsbury was born, and which had been held by the family since the settlement of the county, was on the adjust ment of lines between the States awarded to Delaware. Though land-owners in Mary land and Delaware for about two centuries, and though some of them held offices of local honor and importance in both States, no member of the family seems to have attained more than local distinction until Willard Saulsbury, the youngest of the three brothers | Gove, Eli, and Willard, who have been called the .' Saulsbury Triumvirate " of Delaware, by his eloquence, his absolute fearlessness, and his devotion to what he believed to be the right of the causes he espoused, began
to win the hearts of the people to him, and to achieve those successes, professional and political, which made him in his State second to none of her gifted sons whom she has delighted to honor, and in the broader forum of the Senate of the United States in the most stupendous crisis of our nation's life the peer of any with whom he came in contact. Willard Saulsbury was a bright lad, fond of books, and about the age of thirteen was sent to school at an Academy at Denton, Md., near his home. After completing his academic education at Delaware College and Dickinson College, he began the study of the law with Hon. James L. Bartol of Den ton, afterward Chief-Justice of Maryland. He completed his legal course under the direction of Hon. Martin W. Bates, after wards United States Senator and then one of the Democratic leaders in Delaware, at Dover, where he was admitted to the bar in 1845He had seriously considered at one time the advisability of " going West; " but a re mark of his mother, whose youngest son he was and who wished to keep him near her, that she " would be ashamed of any son who could not make his living in his native State," drove such thoughts from his mind. He was a hard student, but intensely fond of mixing with the people, and during his law course, with characteristic industry and energy, he taught school in Dover, thus doubtless gaining, like so many other men of mark, a practical knowledge of the character of others, and a coolness of judgment and capacity for self-control that was of great use to him in after life. Immediately after his admission to the bar he removed to Georgetown in Sussex County, opened an office, and began the practice of his chosen profession. His genial nature and popular manners soon won him hosts of friends; and his legal knowledge
