Portrait of Justice Thomas Wells Bartley

Thomas Welles Bartley served as a Supreme Court of Ohio Justice, speaker of the Ohio Senate and acting governor until he was succeeded by his father, which created a unique situation in Ohio and unusual in the history of American state government.

Bartley attended Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pa., where he graduated in 1829. After graduation and over the next four years, Bartley earned a master’s degree from Jefferson College and studied law in Mansfield with Jacob Parker and in Washington, D.C. with Elijah Hayward. He was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1833 and opened a private practice in Mansfield. The next year saw the beginning of Bartley’s political career when he was elected to the first of his two terms as Richland County prosecuting attorney. In 1839, Bartley was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives, serving until the end of March 1841. In October 1841, Richland County voters elected Bartley to the first of two terms in the Ohio Senate. Democrats in the Ohio Senate in December 1843 selected Bartley to be the chamber’s Speaker. Gov. Wilson Shannon resigned on April 15, 1844, to accept President John Tyler’s appointment as Minister to Mexico, and Bartley became the acting governor until one was elected at the next state general election.

Following his two terms in the Ohio Senate and his service as acting governor, Bartley returned to Mansfield and his law practice where one of his chief adversaries in Richland and neighboring county courts was future Supreme Court Justice Jacob Brinkerhoff.
Bartley served as district attorney for the northern district of Ohio from 1845 to 1849. Once again, Bartley returned to his law practice in Mansfield. In 1851, Bartley was among a group of eight Mansfield citizens who organized the Richland Mutual Insurance Company, one of the first insurance companies chartered in Mansfield and it limited its operations to Ohio.

In 1863, Bartley left Mansfield and moved to Cincinnati to practice law. Four years later, following the Civil War, Bartley moved to Washington, D.C. to continue practicing of law. In 1879, he founded the publication, the American Register, a journal giving Bartley an opportunity to expound on what he viewed as Democratic Party principles. Bartley abandoned the project a few years later for financial reasons.