William Parish Chilton

William Parish Chilton (August 10, 1810 – January 20, 1871) was a prominent lawyer, jurist, and politician serving the people of Alabama and eventually the Confederate States of America.

Called Will Chilton, he was born in Columbia, Adair County, Kentucky on August 10, 1810, the ninth child of Rev. Thomas John Chilton (a slave-owning Baptist minister) and Margaret Bledsoe, sister of Jesse Bledsoe. He was a younger brother of Thomas Chilton, Representative from Kentucky and ghost writer of an "autobiography" by David Crockett.

When Chilton was 14 months old his large family was among the victims of the New Madrid Earthquakes. As a teenager he left home to live in Tennessee with an older sister, Jane, and her husband Charles Metcalfe. He read law with Return J. Meigs III in Athens, Tennessee, passed the bar in 1828, and began to practice law.

In 1831 Chilton moved to Talladega, Alabama. In 1839 he was elected as a Whig to represent his county in the Alabama House of Representatives. Chilton campaigned vigorously for William Henry Harrison in 1840 and Henry Clay in 1844. In 1843 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress.

While practicing law in Talladega, he tutored his brother-in-law John Tyler Morgan, who passed the bar in 1845. In 1846 he established a law school in Tuskegee.

On December 31, 1847 the state legislature elected Chilton an Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He became Chief Justice December 2, 1852 and served until January 2, 1856.

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