Drummond, Thomas

Born: 1809-10-16 Bristol, Maine

Died: 1890-05-15 Wheaton, Illinois

Thomas Drummond was a lawyer and judge. Drummond graduated from Bowdoin College in 1830. After studying law in Philadelphia, he became a member of the bar in March 1833. In May 1835, Drummond moved to Galena, Illinois, where he practiced law for the next fifteen years. In 1840, Jo Daviess County voters elected him to the Illinois House of Representatives as a Whig. In February 1850, President Zachary Taylor appointed Drummond to succeed Nathaniel Pope as judge of the United States Circuit Court for the District of Illinois. Drummond presided over that court in Springfield and in Chicago until Congress divided the federal court in Illinois into the southern and northern districts. Drummond moved to Chicago in 1854 to where he served as judge of the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois until 1869. Abraham Lincoln represented clients in at least twenty-four cases before Judge Drummond.

Sangamo Journal (Springfield, IL), 14 August 1840, 2:1; Illinois Daily Journal (Springfield), 7 February 1850, 2:1; The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Illinois Volume (Chicago: American Biographical, 1876), 5-6; John M. Palmer, ed., The Bench and Bar of Illinois: Historical and Reminiscent (Chicago: Lewis, 1899), 1:360-62; For Lincoln's cases before Judge Drummond, search "Drummond, Thomas," Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Search.aspx. Illustration courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL.