Henry Calvin Thatcher

Thatcher was born in New Buffalo, Pennsylvania on April 21, 1842. He attended Franklin & Marshall College and graduated in 1864. From there, he went to Albany Law School, where he earned a law degree in 1866. Upon graduating, he traveled to Colorado that same year.

At 24-years of age, he went to Pueblo and established a law practice there.{{cite book |year=1919 |editor1-last=Stone |editor1-first=Wilbur Fiske |title=History of Colorado |url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t2k64rf80?urlappend=%3Bseq=72 |location=Chicago |publisher=S.J. Clarke |volume=2 |pages=64–68 |hdl=2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t2k64rf80?urlappend=%3Bseq=72 }}

In 1869, President U.S. Grant appointed Thatcher to serve as United States Attorney for Colorado Territory. Thatcher resigned the position after serving a little more than a year and returned to private practice.

In 1876 he was elected as a Republican to the Colorado Supreme Court and immediately became the state's first chief justice. He got the position by luck. To create staggered terms for the state's first Supreme Court, one of the newly elected justices was to have a term of three years, the others having longer terms. However, the law stipulated that the person who drew the lot for the shorter term would become Chief Justice, and Thatcher drew the shorter straw.

Thatcher died of kidney failure in San Francisco on March 20, 1884, at 41. He is buried at Roselawn Cemetery in Pueblo.{{cite news |author= |title=Death of Judge Henry C. Thatcher |url=https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=CFT18840321-01.2.16&srpos=2&dliv=none&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA-Judge+Henry+C.+Thatcher-------0-- |work=Colorado Daily Chieftain |date=1884-03-21 |page= 4|access-date=2020-01-12 }}

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{{s-ttl|title=Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court|years=1876–1879}}

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Category:Chief justices of the Colorado Supreme Court

Category:People from Colorado Territory

Category:United States attorneys for the District of Colorado

Category:People from Pueblo, Colorado

Category:Franklin & Marshall College alumni

Category:Albany Law School alumni

Category:1842 births

Category:1884 deaths

Category:19th-century American judges

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