Adrian's Prominent Leaders

Thomas Cooley emerged from Lenawee County as a lawyer and judge widely regarded as the finest legal mind Michigan produced in the nineteenth century. During the 1840s and 1850s, he partnered with local lawyers including Fernando Beaman, Robert Beecher, and Charles Croswell. In 1857, the state legislature asked him to compile the laws of Michigan, and he did this so successfully that he was then asked to organize the law department at the University of Michigan, where he also served as one of its original law professors. In 1864, he was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court and served as chief justice for 20 years. There he produced influential legal works and opinions whose scholarship and legal philosophy carried weight across the nation. Fernando Beaman, an Adrian lawyer, began his political career as an anti-slavery activist and helped form the Republican Party at both the state and national levels. After serving as mayor of Adrian in 1856, he was elected to five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1861 to 1871. As one of the more radical Republicans of his day, he helped push President Lincoln and the country toward abolishing slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment. After the Civil War ended in 1865, he continued working for better political and civil liberties for African Americans through the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Adrian, Michigan · United States