Excerpt from The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 5 Black, Jeremiah Sullivan, attorney-general, was born in Somerset county, Pa., Jan. 10, 1810. He came of scotch-irish ancestry, and his father, who was a member of congress and for several years an associate judge, was a man of influence and con siderable prominence. Young Jeremiah, after ao quiring a thorough classical and mathematical edu cation in the public schools, turned his attention for a time to farming. But he had considerable ambi tion and had already thought of the law as the proper profession for him to follow, and at the age of six teen he went into the cflice of a well-known Somer set lawyer, Chauncey Forward, where he remained three years, when he was admitted to practice al though still in his minority. In 1831 he became deputy attorney general for Somerset county, and married a daughter of his former preceptor in law, Mr. Forward. In 1842 he became president judge of the court of common pleas of his judicial district, composed of the counties of Somerset, Bedford, Ful ton, Franklin, and Blair. In 1851 he became chief justice of the su preme court of Pennsylvania and was re-elected in 1854. In 1857, on the accession of James Buchanan to the presidency, he was made U. S. Attorney-general. In December. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.