1799-1874
John Worth Edmonds served in 1852. Renowned prison reformer. Born in Hudson, Columbia County, N.Y., Mar. 13, 1799. Graduated from Union College, 1816. Entered the law office of Martin Van Buren in 1819. Member of the assembly, 1831. State senator and member of the Court of Errors, 1836, senate president, 1836, and agent-commissioner on special missions to aid Indians on the frontiers. IN 1843 he became a state prison inspector, instituting reforms, and in 1849 formed a Prison Discipline Society. Appointed Circuit Judge in 1845, and in 1847 elected to state supreme court, first district. With George T. Bexter he published a two-volume work entitled “Spiritualism.” In 1868 authored on the “Reports of Select Law Cases,” and “An Address on the Constitution and Code of Procedure,” delivered Jul. 1846, New York. Died Apr. 5, 1874. Interred in Hudson, N.Y. Obituary, The New York Times, Apr. 7, 1874. See 1 McAdam, History of the Bench and Bar of New York, New York History Co. (1897), p. 317. The Court of Appeals has an engraving of him, on paper.
This biography appears in The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals: A Biographical History, ed. Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007). It has not been updated since publication.