1. Mahlon R Pitney IV was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served in the US House of Representatives for two terms from 1895 to 1899.
17 Facts About Mahlon Pitney
1. 2.
Mahlon Pitney later served as an associate justice of the US Supreme Court from 1912 to 1922.
3.
James's son, Mahlon Pitney, fought in the American Revolutionary War alongside George Washington.
4.
Mahlon Pitney IV was born in Morristown, the son of Sarah Louise and Henry Cooper Pitney.
5.
Mahlon Pitney attended the College of New Jersey where he was a classmate of Woodrow Wilson and served as manager of the campus baseball team.
6.
Mahlon Pitney passed the bar exam in 1882 and set up a private practice in Dover, working for a time in partnership with his brother, John Oliver Halstead Mahlon Pitney.
7.
Mahlon Pitney returned to Morristown in 1889 to assume control of his father's law firm, after Henry Pitney was appointed to a judgeship.
8.
Mahlon Pitney was the great-grandfather of actor Christopher Reeve on Reeve's mother's side, as well as his step great-grandfather on his father's side.
9.
In 1894, Mahlon Pitney ran for the United States House of Representatives.
10.
Mahlon Pitney defeated one-term incumbent Johnston Cornish for the seat from New Jersey's 4th congressional district, and was reelected to a second term two years later.
11.
Seven years later, Mahlon Pitney was elevated to the role of Chancellor of New Jersey, a unique judicial position under the state's 1844 constitution.
12.
Mahlon Pitney was nominated by President William Howard Taft on February 19,1912, to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, to succeed John Marshall Harlan.
13.
Justice Mahlon Pitney authored the majority opinion in New York Central Railroad Co.
14.
Mahlon Pitney wrote the controversial majority opinion in Frank v Mangum, which upheld the wrongful 1915 murder conviction of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman, in Atlanta, Georgia, over the dissents of Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes.
15.
Mahlon Pitney resigned from the court in 1922 after suffering a stroke.
16.
Alongside Willis Van Devanter, Mahlon Pitney was one of only two Supreme Court Justices nominated by President Taft who later served with Taft during Taft's chief justiceship.
17.
Mahlon Pitney died in 1924 in Washington, DC, and was interred at Evergreen Cemetery, in Morristown, New Jersey.