Henry Stanbery ¹

   FamilySearch ID: LZFB-KHM.

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Occupation: Attorney General of State of Ohio in 1846 in Columbus, Franklin, OH. ¹ The Ohio legislature established the office in February 1846. That person would be elected by the General Assembly and commissioned by the governor for a five-year term. Henry was elected as the first Attorney General of Ohio. In 1849, the legislature made the position a statewide elective office, beginning with the end of Stanbery's term.

2. Occupation: Attorney General of the United States on 23 Jul 1866 in Washington, District of Columbia, DC. ¹ He was appointed by President Johnson.

3. Book: History of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio, 1883. ²
Henry Stanberry was for more than thirty years a distinguished member of the Lancaster bar. Settling in Lancaster in 1832, he married Elizabeth Beecher, oldest daughter of Philomon Beecher. After her death, in 1845, he married a daughter of William K. Bond, of Chillicothe. Mr. Stanberry, as a lawyer, had few superiors. He practiced in the adjoining counties, and in the courts of the United States. He was the peer of Ewing, Hunter and Brazee. As a pleader, he was eloquent and forcible. In politics he was a leading Whig of Fairfield county, until 1850, when he joined the Democrats. In 1866 he accepted the appointment of Attorney General for the United States, as a member of President Johnson's cabinet. He was, previous to this, for a number of years, Attorney General of Ohio. In 1864, he removed to Cincinnati and established a suburban house, on the Kentucky side of the river. His death occurred in New York, in June or July, 1881, at the age of eighty years. A good story is told of Mr. Stanberry, which is worth the telling. A man accused of horse stealing was arraigned before the court and had no council. Mr. Stanberry was assigned to defend the accused. There being no private room, he took his client, by permission, to the rear of the building, for consultation. He asked the man if he had stolen the horse. The prisoner said he expected they'd prove it on him. Stanberry asked him how long it would take him to run to that woods, some three hundred yards off. He thought he could make it in about one minute. "Try it," Stanberry said. After the thief had been some time out of sight in the dense woods, Mr. Stanberry returned alone to the court room. ''Where is your client?" queried the court. "I have cleared him," council replied.

4. Book: Attorneys General of the United States, 1789-1985, 1985. ¹
Born in New York, New York, on February 20, 1803, Henry Stanbery moved to Ohio in 1814. He graduated from Washington College, in Pennsylvania, in September of 1819, and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in Ohio in May 1824 and to the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1832. In 1846 he was elected the first attorney general of Ohio by the State assembly. President Johnson appointed Stanbery Attorney General of the United States on July 23, 1866. He resigned on March 12, 1868, to defend President Johnson during his impeachment trial. At the conclusion of the trial, Johnson renominated him Attorney General and also to the Supreme Court, but the Senate did not confirm him. He died in New York City on June 26, 1881.

5. Newspaper: The Kentucky Post, 2005. ³ When he died in 1881, Henry Stanbery was one of the wealthiest people in Northern Kentucky.
His home in Fort Thomas was described as elegant and the street he lived on still bears his last name. And as a former U.S. attorney general, he was one of the highest ranking officeholders in local history.
At a time when the United States faced a constitutional crisis, he threw himself into the debate and risked his own reputation and personal health to resolve the issue.
Stanbery was born in New York City on Feb. 20, 1803, the son of Dr. Jonas Stanbery and Ann Lucy Seaman. The family moved to Zanesville, Ohio, in 1814.
Educated in local schools, he enrolled in what is now known as Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., in 1815 and graduated in 1819.
Stanbery then studied law in an attorney's office in Lancaster, Pa., and later in a law office in Zanesville. He took and passed the bar in 1824, returning to Lancaster to begin practicing law. His decision was influenced by a young woman who lived there named Frances Beecher, whom he later married. They had three children -- Pilemon, George and a daughter that records now list only as Mrs. Francis Avery.
After the death of his wife, Stanbery married Cecelia Bond, daughter of William Key Bond of Cincinnati.
Stanbery moved his family to Cincinnati and in 1846 became Ohio's first attorney general when that position was created.
In 1850, he was a delegate to a state convention in 1850 and in 1857 he moved to the District of the Highlands.
Then in 1866 Stanbery was named to the cabinet of President Andrew Johnson, who moved up from the vice presidency after Lincoln was assassinated. Stanbery became Johnson's attorney general.
Stanbery resigned as attorney general to assume the role of lead attorney in defense of Johnson in legislative hearing to remove him from office.
Johnson did not have enough money to pay the attorneys, so friends raised money and offered it to Johnson. He, however, refused the, money saying he did not want to be beholden to anyone.
Stanbery and the others then agreed to donate their time, which Johnson accepted.
Despite being ill, Stanbery successfully defended Johnson and Johnson was able to finish Lincoln's term as president. Accounts say Stanbery's insistence on due process slowed the trial in Johnson's favor.
After the trial Johnson tried to re-nominate Stanbery as attorney general, but Congress would not confirm him.
Stanbery then returned to private practice in Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati and settled in the District of the Highlands.
There he helped write the district charter.
He retired from legal work in 1878.
He died on June 26, 1881, leaving an estate valued at more than $250,000.
An account in the Daily Commonwealth on June 27, 1881, said he died in New York City of acute bronchitis. Totally blind, Stanbery was recuperating from an operation the previous October, which may have contributed to his death.
The Newport-based Kentucky State Journal said Stanbery had few equals and no superiors as an attorney. The newspaper added that he was an "honorable, dignified and upright man."
His first wife, Frances Beecher, had died in January 1840. His second wife outlived him. Cecelia Bond died in May 1891.
Henry Stanbery is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.

Henry married Frances M. Beecher, daughter of Honorable Philemon Beecher and Susan Gillespie, on 28 Apr 1829 in , Fairfield, OH. (Frances M. Beecher was born about 1810, died in 1840 in Lancaster, Fairfield, OH and was buried in Lancaster: Elmwood Cemetery, Fairfield, OH.)

Henry next married Cecelia Bond, daughter of William Key Bond and Unknown, in 1841. (Cecelia Bond died in May 1889 in , Campbell, KY.)