102 court of appeals of maryland

The dignity, firmness, ability and impartiality of his conduct,
in his judicial capacity are too much matters of recent notoriety
and general recollection to make any further detail necessary.

Evidently a judge to give character to the court
and to justice. He seems to have been the great-
est landowner among the judges, having owned
a large total acreage on the neck between the Sev-
ern and South Rivers, from Annapolis out to the
Bay. And he owned considerable property in
Annapolis, including what is now known as the
Hammond-Harwood House. Misfortune or bad
management appears to have cut down his earnings
in his late years, for he had a posthumous career
in the law in a leading case on the application of
a decedent's real estate to the payment of his
debts.³

Gabriel Duvall, also a judge of the General
Court, from 1796 until his appointment in 1802
to the position of Comptroller of the Treasury of
the United States, was selected for the first district,
but he declined the appointment. Four days later
he was offered the position of Chancellor and de-
clined that. He was later, from 1811 to 1836, one
of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United
States. For the sixth district, Robert Smith, of
Baltimore, was first selected. He had been Sec-
retary of the Navy under President Jefferson,
from 1801 to 1805, and in the latter year Attorney
General of the United States for a while, and then
again Secretary of the Navy. Smith, too, de-
clined the appointment, and also declined an ap-
pointment to the position of Chancellor after Du-
vall had declined it; and it was, apparently, an

3. Chase v. Lockerman, 11 Gill & Johnson, 185.