Tilghman family.

The Tilghman family has long been associated with the early settlement of Maryland's Eastern Shore region. The men represented in this collection, lawyers in Maryland and Pennsylvania, trace their lineage to Richard Tilghman, an English physician who emigrated from Kent County, England, to Queen Anne's County on the Chester River in Maryland in 1661 or 1662.

William Tilghman (1756-1827) was born in Talbot County, Maryland, on August 12, 1756. In 1763 he entered the College, Academy and Charitable School of Philadelphia, which became the University of Pennsylvania. Upon completion of law school in 1772 he worked in Philadelphia as a lawyer until 1776. During the Revolutionary War, he and his father, both believed to be loyalists by their peers, moved to the family estate in Maryland and shortly thereafter William began to practice law there. Living in Chester Town (now Chestertown) Maryland, William Tilghman entered the political scene in 1788 as a member of the Maryland Assembly, a position he held until 1790. In 1791 he became a Maryland senator, a seat he resigned in 1793 when he moved back to Philadelphia, where he was admitted to the bar in September of 1794. In Philadelphia, he began to rise in the ranks of the legal profession, and in 1801 President Adams elected William Tilghman the chief judge of the third circuit court. This court, however, was abolished in 1802, at which point William resumed his law practice in the city. In 1805, he was appointed to the office of the president of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia and the surrounding counties, and he was a judge of the Pennsylvania High Court of Errors and Appeals. In 1806 William was commissioned Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, a position he held until his death in 1827. In addition to his legal career William Tilghman was also a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania from 1802 until his death, and president of the American Philosophical Society from 1824 until his death in 1827.

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