Application to the Pennsylvania Bar - initial attempt
Admission to the bar in Pennsylvania in 1865 meant being admitted to practice in a particular county. For Jonathan Jasper Wright this required an examination before the president judge of the joint jurisdiction of Susquehanna and Bradford Counties. And this meant an audience with Judge Ulysses Mercur of Towanda, the county seat of Bradford County.
Judge Mercur was born in Towanda in 1818, attended Jefferson College (now Washington and Jefferson University) in Canonsburg, southwest of Pittsburgh. He read the law with the law office of Edward Overton in Towanda. He practiced with Overton’s firm and was named President Judge when Judge David Wilmot was elected to the US Senate in 1861.
It’s notable that Justice Wright’s mentors were from Springville and Wilkes-Barre, nearly 40 miles from Towanda. So a candidate as unusual (unprecedented!) as Jonathan Wright would not have been at all familiar to Judge Mercur in the way he would have been to those in Montrose. The Judge (even though a member of the party of Lincoln) was not receptive to the application of a Black man to the bar.
In 1864, [Jonathan Jasper Wright] made an informal application to Judge Mercur for admission to practice in the Pennsylvania courts. The Judge, declining to give a direct answer except from the bench, said that it was scarcely probable the application would receive an affirmative reply.
[“Another Witness,” Winnsboro News and Herald, Winnsboro, S.C., August 29, 1878, p.1.]
Becoming a lawyer would have to wait for a more sympathetic voice. So, as we’ve seen, at the beginning of 1865 Jonathan Jasper Wright would apply to become a teacher in South Carolina.
Biographical details of Judge Mercur from The History of Bradford County Pennsylvania, H. C. Bradsby. Chicago, S.B. Nelson and Company. 1891