Estate of John G. Ewing
Thomas Ewing Family Papers (EWI), University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556
Correspondence, letters, books, ledgers, and docket book of Thomas Ewing; correspondence of his wife Maria (Boyle) Ewing; letters and papers of Philemon B. Ewing, his sisters, his wife, Maria Rebecca (Gillespie) Ewing, and members of her family: her sister Eliza Maria Gillespie (i.e., Mother Angela), her brother, Neal Gillespie, her mother, Madeline Miers Phelan, and her stepfather, William Phelan. Also Phelan estate papers, diaries, sermons by Father Neal Gillespie, correspondence and business papers (1835-1896) of John G. Ewing, and photographs. (Philemon Beecher Ewing of Lancaster, Ohio, an Ohio Supreme Court judge, was Thomas Ewing's son. John G. Ewing, professor at the University of Notre Dame and lawyer, was his grandson.)
Available in microfilm (6 reels) for purchase from University of Notre Dame Archives, 607 Hesburgh Library, Notre Dame, IN, 46556. The Ewing Family Papers were acquired from the estate of John G. Ewing following his death in 1927.
Thomas Ewing (1789-1871), United States Senator from Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, trusted advisor to the President Andrew Johnson, and a highly successful lawyer, was born near West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia on December 28, 1789, the sixth child and second son of George and Rachel (Harris) Ewing. He died on October 26, 1871. His father, a school teacher who had served in the Continental Currency, had migrated to Virginia from his home in Cumberland County, New Jersey. Around 1793, the family moved to Waterford, on the Muskingum River, and, in the Spring of 1798, moved once again, this time to Ames Township, now in Athens County, Ohio. Taught to read by an older sister, young Thomas soon demonstrated a healthy appetite for reading and a remarkable memory for what he had read. Until his twentieth year he labored on his father's farm. Nights, he devoted to the past time he enjoyed most -- reading.
In August 1808, anxious to secure the funds needed to further his education, he set out for the Kanawha Salt Works, near Charleston, Virginia. For the next sixty-three years there were only a few brief periods when he was not associated with salt-boiling, either as a worker or as an owner. Indeed, "Tom, Ewing, the Salt-Boiler" later became a Whig campaign cry. Returning home, he demonstrated his filial piety by using a portion of his earnings to help pay off the mortgage on his family's farm. With the remainder and subsequent earnings at the Salt Works, he financed his way through college. In May 1815, he and John Hunter became the first to receive B.A. degrees from Ohio University. He then returned home and in July went to Lancaster, Ohio, where, for the next thirteen months, he studied law under Philemon Beecher. In August of 1816, at the age of twenty-six, he was admitted to the Ohio Bar. In 1817 when "Pa" Beecher went to serve in Congress, Ewing was left in charge of the office and he soon had a large practice before the Ohio Supreme Court. From 1818 to 1829, he also served as Prosecuting Attorney for Fairfield County, in which capacity he was concerned primarily with the apprehension and prosecution of counterfeiters.
On January 7, 1820, Ewing, himself of Presbyterian stock but with no real church affiliation, married Philemon Beechers' niece, Maria Wills Boyle, a devout Roman Catholic and the daughter of Hugh Boyle, clerk of the court of Common Pleas of Fairfield County. They had seven children: