Seth Perkins Staples

1776 - 1861  (85 years)

• Name	Seth Perkins Staples
  Birth	1 Sep 1776	Canterbury, Windham, Connecticut   [1]
  Gender	Male
  Death	6 Nov 1861	New York, New York   [2]
  Siblings	1 sibling
  1. Seth Perkins Staples ,   b. 1 Sep 1776, Canterbury, Windham, Connecticut d. 6 Nov 1861, New York, New York  (Age 85 years)   2. Susanna Staples ,   b. 20 Aug 1778, Canterbury, Windham, Connecticut d. 22 Nov 1855, New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut  (Age 77 years) ▻ Roger Sherman ,  m. 7 Jan 1801
  Person ID	I14577	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	3 Jun 2018

  
  

  Father	Rev. John Staples,   b. 23 Apr 1742   d. 15 Feb 1804 (Age 61 years)
  Mother	Susanna Perkins,   b. 29 Jan 1753   d. 10 Sep 1810 (Age 57 years)
  Family ID	F9054	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  Lawyer and politician. He was a representative of the town of New Haven in the State Legislature for seven or eight sessions, most of them during the war of 1812. The institution that eventually became Yale Law School began with him training legal apprentices in his law office in New Haven in the first decade of the 19th century. "After completing his studies at Yale [Seth Perkins Staples] began the study of the law in the office of the Hon. David Daggett in New Haven, Connecticut for two years. During this time Seth hand-copied a set of Tapping Reeve's law notes for his own use, but never attended the Litchfield Law School as a student (a common misconception). Once his understanding of the law was adequate. Seth passed the bar in Litchfield in 1799, and then immediately opened a law office of his own in New Haven and commenced practice. In that same year he married Catharine Wales Staples. During their marriage the couple had six children; three sons and three daughters, one daughter of which later attended the Litchfield Female Academy. The future Yale Law School formed in the New Haven law office of Seth P. Staples. Staples owned an exceptional library (an attraction for students at a time when law books were scarce), and he began training apprentices in the early 1800s. By the 1810s his law office had a full-fledged law school. Samuel Hitchcock, one of Staples’ former students, became a partner at the office and later, the proprietor of the New Haven Law School." [Litchfield Historical Society] "The [New Haven Law] School began in the New Haven law office of Seth P. Staples in the 1800s, who began training lawyers. By 1810 he was operating a law school. He took on a former student, Samuel J. Hitchcock, as a law partner, and Hitchcock became the proprietor of the New Haven Law School, joined by David Daggett in 1824. (The Yale Law School shield, shown at the upper right of this page, shows staples and a rampant dog, representing Seth Staples and David Daggett.) The school's affiliation with Yale began in the mid-1820s and in 1843, the school's students began receiving Yale degrees." [Wikipedia article on Yale Law School]

  
  

• Sources

  [S2001] Brief Memoirs of the Class of 1797 by Thomas Day and James Murdock. New Haven: Printed by B. L. Hamlen, Printer to Yale College, 1848. [S160] Wikipedia.