Darius Cadwell (1821-1905) was the second son of Roger Cadwell who emigrated in 1817 from Bloomfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, and settled in Andover, Ashtabula County, Ohio. Darius was born on April 13, 1821 in Andover, attended Allegheny College at Meadville, Pennsylvania, and in 1842 began the study of law with the firm of Wade and Ranney (Benjamin F. Wade and Rufus P. Ranney), at Jefferson, Ohio. Admitted to the bar in September 1844, he entered into a partnership with Rufus P. Ranney and Charles S. Simonds which lasted until 1851, when the firm changed to Simonds and Cadwell. This partnership continue until 1871.
Cadwell married Ann Eliza Watrous of Ashtabula, Ohio, on April 13, 1847.
Darius Cadwell held several minor elective offices and also served as a state representative in 1856 and 1857 and as a state senator in 1858 and 1859. During the American Civil War he served as the Provost Marshall for the 19th District of Ohio until 1865 when he took charge of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Districts. He was discharged on December 20, 1865. In 1871, he opened a law office in Cleveland, Ohio, at 83 Public Square. In 1873 he was elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Cuyahoga County for a five year term.
Darius Cadwell died in Cleveland, Ohio, on November 26, 1905.
click here to view the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History entry for Darius Cadwell
The Darius Cadwell Papers, 1848-1902 and undated, consist of correspondence, letter copy books, forms, circular orders and letters, abstracts, receipts, and other papers, relating especially to Cadwell's activities as provost marshal. Includes information on the administration of military justice, the draft, recruitment, and the apprehension of deserters during the Civil War, and correspondence with James D. Ray, a real estate businessman of Duluth, Minnesota. The collection also includes papers relating to particular legal cases, wills, deeds, mortgages, quit claim deeds, account books, bills, and cancelled checks.
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the history of the American Civil War, legal history in Ohio, and real estate issues in Duluth, Minnesota, during the nineteenth century. Of particular interest in this collection are the following: correspondence of Darius Cadwell with his brother James D. Ray who had opened a real estate office in Duluth, Minnesota, during the land boom, 1869-1873, which was occasioned by Jay Cooke's plan to use Duluth as the northern terminus of his railroad; material from the period 1863-1865 which relates to the position of the provost marshal in Ohio's 19th District, to the draft, substitutes, to the administration of military justice, and to the apprehension of deserters and criminals during the American Civil War; papers dealing with the case of
The collection is arranged in four series.
Processed by Dennis I. Harrison in 1968.
None.
A list of names of plaintiffs and defendants whose names appear in Series III: Legal Documents is available at the Reference Desk of the WRHS Research Library.
[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 3283 Darius Cadwell Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.