The State of Mississippi Superior Court of Chancery, Western District: To Wit. To William Hoggatt, and the Sheriff of Adams County their Counsellors, Attornies and Agents, Greeting…

1825 Writ of Injunction by Mississippi’s first chancellor, Joshua G. Clarke

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1825 Writ of Injunction by the State of Mississippi’s first chancellor, Joshua G. Clarke, staying the execution of a court judgment. Clarke’s injunction is here signed by clerk, James A. Girault (1793–1851).

Girault was a pioneer in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi and was a settler at Elliott, which was then an Indian mission school. In 1814, he was appointed clerk of the supreme court of errors and appeals by the governor of Mississippi Territory.¹

In the writ, William Hoggatt and the Sheriff of Adams County were enjoined to “...absolutely desist from proceeding to enforce the collection of a certain judgment obtained in the Circuit Court…against ...Reed Carr…”

Contemporary docketing, signed by Sheriff John Forsyth, reports: “Defendant [Hoggatt] not found.” Additional docketing, signed by Girault, declares that complainant Reed Carr “...hath entered into Bond with appr[ov]ed[?] security conditioned according to Law.”

The writ was ordered by Chancellor Joshua G. Clarke and subsequently issued by Girault. A Pennsylvania native, Clarke was a territorial legislator and a representative at the state’s constitutional convention. In 1821, after statehood, Clarke was appointed first chancellor of the state.²

“On November 23, 1821, during [former territorial judge George] Poindexter’s subsequent service as governor, the legislature established a ‘superior court of chancery’ made up of one chancellor (Joshua G. Clarke) who would sit in two districts: in Adams County for the western district and Marion County for the eastern district, and by 1827, Mississippi had four chancery districts.”³

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