of Common Pleas for the fifth judicial district, and was continued in that position for three consecutive terms without opposition. His party, in the state convention of 1881, nominated him for the supreme bench of Ohio, but the entire state ticket was defeated. In 1886, when President Cleveland was in office, he received an almost unanimous recommendation from the bench, bar and citizens of Ohio, for appointment to the sixth United States judicial circuit, but the scales turned in favor of Howell E. Jackson, at that time United States senator from Tennessee. In the following year, however. President Cleveland named him chief justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and he continued to discharge the duties of that office until 1903, when he voluntarily retired.
While a member of the Ohio bar. Judge Bingham took high rank as an earnest, forcible and industrious lawyer. A successful jury lawyer, he was at his best in the argument of legal propositions, and as a safe and thoroughly judicious counselor. Naturally of a judicial temperament, throughout his long career on the bench he has been regarded as a man of more than usual legal acumen, of quiet power, and humane instincts. Few of his decisions have suffered reversal at the hands of superior courts; and then very rarely, if ever, on the ground of a fundamental error of judgment.
Judge Bingham has been twice married. On November 21, 1850, to Susannah F. Gunning, of Fayette county, Ohio, who died August 2, 1886, leaving two sons and two daughters. He subsequently married, on August 8, 1888, Mrs. Melinda C. Patton, daughter of United States senator Allen T. Caperton, of West Virginia.
