09/09/2026
On this date in 1792, Henry Hitchcock, fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was born in Burlington, Vermont. A grandson of Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen, Hitchcock grew up in Vermont and read law after graduating from the University of Vermont. He was admitted to the Bar in 1815 and traveled to the Mississippi Territory in 1816, locating first in Mobile and then in St. Stephens, the new Alabama territorial capital. He represented Washington County in the Constitutional Convention of 1819 and became the state's first Attorney General in 1819. In 1826, Hitchcock left the capital, Cahaba, and returned to Mobile. Nine years later, in January 1835, the General Assembly elected Hitchcock as one of the three judges on the new, separate Supreme Court, and in June 1836, his fellow judges chose Hitchcock to be Chief Justice. During his tenure on the Court, he wrote 65 opinions, only two of which were accompanied by dissents. He resigned in January 1837 and returned to Mobile, where he died in 1839 of yellow fever. His manual, Alabama Justice of the Peace, was the first book published in Alabama.
