conditions and questions as complex and difficult as ever engaged the attention of statesmen and jurists. This was particularly the case as to the new courts then organized. A multitude of new and difficult cases, growing out of war transactions, and the adjustment of the rights of parties under war contracts to a shifting and variable currency, and to the phenomena of a novel and unprecedented civil convulsion, and the vexed questions arising under legislation in reference to the settlement of public and private debts, and the readjustment of the body politic to new social, political, and business conditions, were awaiting adjudi cation and settlement by the new courts. Practically a new code of laws had to be enacted and construed. In this critical era a General Assembly, composed largely of young men without legislative experience, had been placed in control of public affairs; but they were generally men of remarkable intelligence, of education, of great industry, and bent upon rendering their State the best service in their power. This Legislature chose as the Judges of the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State, — the tribunal which was finally to determine many of these novel and difficult questions, — five lawyers, whose profound learning, varied experience, thorough ac quaintance with public affairs and with the history and condition of the people of their State, and, above all, whose unswerving rec titude, broad patriotism, exalted courage, and strong common-sense eminently fitted them for the efficient discharge of their impor tant duties. Perhaps no court which ever sat had, in the course of thirteen years, to deal with so many difficult, important, and far-reach ing questions of first impression; and certainly no court ever solved and settled such questions with more ability or more fidelity to the principles of right and justice.
Francis T. Anderson, the subject of this sketch, was chosen in March, 1870, one of the original five members of this court. The other judges elected were R. C. L. Moncure, the President of the court, W. T. Joynes, Waller R. Staples, and Joseph Christian. The great learning and ability of Judge Joynes were lost to the court by his resig nation on account of failing health, in the early part of 1872; and he was worthily suc ceeded by Judge Wood Bouldin in April of that year, and Judge Bouldin dying in Octo ber, 1876, was succeeded by Judge Edward C. Burks. Both Judges Bouldin and Burks fully came up to the measure of their great duties and responsibilities, and maintained the high standard of judicial purity and ability which had been established by their associates. The venerable and honored president of the court died in August, 1882, and was succeeded by Judge L. L. Lewis, who be came president of the succeeding court, which was organized in January, 1883, — a position which he still fills with marked ability. Francis T. Anderson, son of William and Anne Thomas Anderson, was born at Wal nut Hill, Botetourt County, Va., on the i ith of December, 1808. His father was of that heroic Scotch-Irish stock which in the last century settled and held the valley of Vir ginia, and whose unsurpassed valor, hardi hood, and feats of arms conquered Kentucky and the West. His mother was a daugh ter of Col. Francis Thomas, of Frederick County, Md. His father and mother were devoted Christians. He was reared upon an upper Virginia farm under influences and in the daily presence of exemplars that imbued his youthful mind with lofty ideas of duty to his God and to his country. It was a life with wholesome surroundings, — a life, in his boyhood and youth, spent largely in the open air. He belonged to a generation which con stituted a connecting link between the
