Litchfield enquirer., 1874-01-15
The writer has before him

nismber Of these, some of which are wor i thy of preservation in whole or in part
 4 brief Aggression will afford an oppor
 tnnity to give the history of these letter,
 and to add few facts concerning Judge Reeve and his family not easily accessible l to the general reader. Mrs. Sarah Reeve
 Aaron Burr's sister. died March 30. 1797 leaving one child, Aaron Burr Reeve, who
 died in Troy, N. r., in 1909. The latter
 left also one SOD, Tapping Burr Reeve, who died in Yale College in 1929. a member oi
 the Senior class. With him Judge Reeves l family became extinct. He married sec i end time, April 30, 1798, Elizabeth Thomp
 son, but had no children by her. He | died December 13, 1923.
 1 Tapping Reeve was once so well known
 in this country, in the South as we'll as 1T
 the North, as the founder, in 1784, of the celebrated Litchfeld Law School, i1
 which every state in the Union was al some time represented, that he merits 6
 longer notice than can be given him here. He was man of great simplicity of char. 1 acter, of tender sensibilities, O; noble i'm. pulses, and of fervent pie.y. ''His sym pathies," says Hollister, naturally led him to espouse the cause of the oppresse ed and helpless He was the first eminent lawyer in this country who dared to ar- raign the common law of England for it's severity and refined cruelty, in cutting of the natural rights of married women, and placing their property as well as their persons at the mercy of their husbands. All the mitigating changes in our jurisprudence which have been made to redeem helpless woman from the barbarities of her legalized ty- rant, may fairly be traced to author of the first American treatise on ''The Do mestic Relations.
 Judge Reeve was principal of the Law School for nearly forty years, and ednca- ted a large number of the most promi- nent lawyers of our country, among whom were JOnn C. CalnOun, JOnn M. Claytop Levi Woodbury, Roger s. Baldwin, Joh1i Y. Mason, James Gould, Henry Baldwin, Truman Smith. Horatio Seymour, Jabez W. Huntington, Origen s. Seymour, Sam uel D. Hubbard and William C. Dawson. In 1798 he was appointed Judge of the Superior court and of the Supreme court of Errors, 8 position which he hetd unin- Chief Judge of the Supreme court, equiv alent in Connecticut to Chief Justice in other states.
 In his will Judge Reeve left his prop erty, real and personal, to his wife, one- half absolutely and one-half in trust for his grandchild until he should become of age. Sine was also constituted his guar dian. In case of her death this trust was to devolve upon Miss Amelia c. Ogden.
 Miss Ogden was the natural daughter of Aaron Ogden (brother of Aaron Burr's intimate friend, Matthias Ogden), who was United States Senator from 1901 to 1903, and afterwards Governor of New Jersey, and of Mrs. Eunice Pollock, ,daugh- ter of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and sister of the mother Aaron and Sarah Burr. She was born 1779, and her moth- CT having married second time the fol- lowing year, she was ''put away privily." When about twelve years old she was sent to Goshen, Conn.,, into the family of the Rev. Asahel Hooker, whose wife was her cousin. and she found her way thence to where Mrs Reeve gave her a home. She became great favorite with Judge Reeve, and was tenderly cared for and educated by him. as if she had been his own daughter
 Her mind, naturally vigorous, was de- veloped under his skilful training to de- gree rare among women of her time. She excelled to in the social graces, and be- came an ornament of the society for which Litchfeld was famous in those days. She had many suitors, but conscious of the stain on her birth, she uniformly declined all offers of marriage and remained single during life.
 After Judge Reeves death Miss Ogden continued to reside with his widow, who, in 184O, conveyed to her by deed the house in which they lived, reserving to herself certain rights during her life. Mrs. Reeve died two years after, and Miss Ogden became sole possessor of the prop- erty. On her death, in 1866, the place passed into strange hands, and the furni- ture and other personal property were sold by auction. Among the rubbish of the garret were found many papers of the revolutionary period and family letters, not the least interesting of which are the letters of Aaron Burr previously referred
 We left Burr and Ogden on their arrival at Washington's camp at Cambridge. The following letter, written from there to Mrs. Reeve, is merely brotherly epistle. from which. unfortunately for us, he de- bars all mention ofpolitics. His opinion, however, on the state of public affairs and his disappointment and disgust at what to him the criminal inaction of the army, have been preserved elsewhere. The letter is given ver6atins ct titerattm:
 CAMBr1GE, August 26th.
 ''Dear Sister: This is the fourth Let ter l have wrote to you, and two have sent to Mir. Reeve since have been here, and yet MT. Phillips tells me you com plain grievously that I never write. I hope then that you will allow me to a lit tie, for have not reed single Line from either of you since have been at this Place. am told indeed there are Letters in Town for me brought by the Litchfield Post, but no Mortal knows where he has laid them, pray direct him to leave my Letters for the future at Pom eroys, opposite the College, where lodge.
 ''You shan't have one Word of Politicks in this Letter for several Reasons-one is, I am just out of Bed, rouz'd by Mir. Phil lips, and have not yet my Eyes open much less my senses-and furthermore, MT. Phillips goes off in ten Minutes to Roxbury, and is doubtful whether he will return to this Place again-if he does I shall have another Letter to give him, if not this must suffice.
 Yesterday reed Letter from T. Ed wards very urgent for me to go to Stock bridge and from thence with him to att tend an Indian Congress to be holden at Albany, but I think shall take no No tice of his Invitation-his Letter was dated Augt 22d-all well.
 'But I fear MT. Pms Patience is ex- hausted--remember me with Abundance of Love to my Brother.
 1T am dear Sister,
 s'Your Aff'te Brother. &c., !. GA. B.
 ''You shall receive a Letter by every Post if you will direct me-"
 CT. Edwards" was his uncle Timothy, the eldest son of Jonathan Edwards. He was the guardian of both Aaron and Sarah Burr, and they had been brought up in his family after the death of their