Merriman, Amos L.

Born: 1823-01-31 New York

Died: 1905-02-06 Vermont

Flourished: Peoria, Illinois

Amos L. Merriman was an attorney and judge and the brother of Halsey O. Merriman. Amos and Halsey maintained a law practice in Peoria, Illinois, until the latter’s death in 1854, when Amos entered into a partnership with Julius Manning. In April 1854, he married Kate E. Reed in Peoria County, Illinois. In 1860, Merriman was practicing law and living in Peoria's Fifth Ward and owned real estate valued at $80,000 and had a personal estate of $1,500. Merriman continued his partnership with Manning until he became judge of the Sixteenth Judicial Circuit in 1861. He resigned from that post in 1863 to prosecute war claims against the government in Washington, DC.

Gravestone, Derby Line Cemetery, Derby Line, VT; John M. Palmer, ed., The Bench and Bar of Illinois: Historical and Reminiscent (Chicago: Lewis, 1899), 1:307; James M. Rice, Peoria City and County Illinois (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1912), 1:371; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Peoria County, 13 April 1854, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 5, Peoria, Peoria County, IL, 352; Ernest E. East to Benjamin Thomas, 7 January 1938, Abraham Lincoln Association Copy Files, Lincoln Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IL.