Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Metcalf, Theron

METCALF, Theron, jurist, b. in Franklin, Mass., 16 Oct., 1784; d. in Boston, Mass., 12 Nov., 1875. He was graduated at Brown in 1805. In 1839 he was appointed reporter of the Massachusetts supreme court, and he sat on the bench of that court from 24 Feb., 1848, till 1865. Brown gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1844, and Harvard the same in 1848. His annotations were considered valuable for their philosophical investigation and discriminating analysis. Judge Metcalf gave to Brown a set of fifty volumes of ordination sermons that he had collected. His publications include “A Digest of the Cases decided in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts from 1816 to 1823, including the Five last Volumes of Tyng's and the first of Octavius Pickering's Reports” (Boston, 1825); “Reports from 1840 till 1849” (13 vols., 1840-'51); the first volume of “Digest of Decisions of Courts of Common Law and Admiralty in the United States” (1840); and a “Supplement to the Revised Statutes of Massachusetts till 1844,” with Luther S. Cushing (1844). He edited “The General Laws of Massachusetts till 1822,” by Asahel Stearns and Lemuel Shaw (2 vols., 1823); George Maule and William Selwyn's “Reports”; Russell on “Crimes”; Starkie on “Evidence”; and Yelverton's “Reports.” Judge Metcalf contributed able articles to the “American Jurist” on the “Law of Contracts,” and delivered an oration at Dedham, 4 July, 1810, and an address before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Brown in 1832.