Born and educated in England, Harry Toulmin became a Unitarian minister and fled persecution in 1793. In the U.S. he served as president of Transylvania University and secretary of the state of Kentucky. In 1804 Thomas Jefferson appointed him the first federal judge for part of the Mississippi Territory, now southern Alabama. Toulmin issued the arrest warrant for Aaron Burr, helped prevent war with Spain, wrote the first digest of laws of Alabama, and represented Baldwin County as its only delegate to the First Alabama Constitutional Convention in 1819.