Home County: St. Charles
Term of Service on the Supreme Court of Missouri: May 1823 – July 1825
Pettibone moved to Missouri in 1817, settling in St. Louis the following year. By 1818, he had accepted a partnership with one of the preeminent lawyers in the area, Colonel Rufus Easton. On November 30, 1820, Governor Alexander McNair appointed Pettibone to the position of circuit court judge of what was then the Second Judicial Circuit, which included Callaway, Lincoln, Montgomery, Pike, Ralls and St. Charles counties. He served as a judge of that circuit from February 1821 until his resignation in 1823.
In May 1823, Pettibone accepted McNair’s appointment to the Supreme Court of Missouri to fill the vacancy left by Judge John D. Cook’s resignation. Pettibone was the fourth judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri.
Judge Rufus Pettibone served on the Supreme Court of Missouri from 1823 until his death July 31, 1825, in St. Charles. He was 41 years old.
Biographical information by Matt Orf, 2017, University of Missouri-Columbia.
Sources used (a copy of each is located on file at the Supreme Court of Missouri Law Library):
Buel Leopard and Floyd Shoemaker, eds., The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of the State of Missouri (Columbia, MO: The State Historical Society of Missouri, 1922), 47.
History of Callaway County, Missouri, (St. Louis, MO: National Historical Company, 1884), 265. Information courtesy of the Missouri Digital Heritage website of the Missouri State Archives, accessed November 1, 2021.
St. Louis Missouri Republican, Wednesday, May 28, 1823, page 2, column 5. Information courtesy of the SHSMO Newspaper Database, available from the State Historical Society of Missouri website, accessed June 2017.
William Van Ness Bay, Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri, (St. Louis, MO: F. H Thomas and Company., 1878), 98-100.