My Genealogy Hound

Judge James Middleton Pittman, one of the distinguished jurists of the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Arkansas, was born near Prairie Grove May 1, 1838, and is the son of James C. and Mary A. (Tuttle) Pittman. Judge Pittman left home at the age of thirteen, clerked in a dry goods store and attended Ozark Institute. At the age of sixteen he became teacher of mathematics in Ozark Institute, and the following year he began reading law in the office of Hon. W. D. Reagan, of Fayetteville, being admitted to the bar from this office in his twenty-first year, before Judge Felix I. Batson. He immediately began practicing at Carrollton, Carroll Co., and continued at this until the war, when he enlisted his services in the State troops, and rendered effective and active service at Oak Hill, or Wilson’s Creek, as captain of Company K. Walker’s regiment. After the discharge of the State troops he entered the Confederate service as private of Company E, Sixteenth Arkansas Infantry, Hill’s regiment, and participated in the battles of Pea Ridge, Corinth and siege of Port Hudson, La. Upon the reorganization, in 1862, he was elected from the ranks as major of the regiment, and was afterward promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, taking command of the Sixteenth Arkansas. He was captured July 8, 1863, at Port Hudson, La., and was confined in the Federal prisons until released July 24, 1865, by special proclamation. After the war Judge Pittman spent a year in Carrollton, and in 1867 moved to Washington County, Ark. He represented that county and Benton County in the State Legislature of 1871. In 1874 he was elected circuit judge, holding the position until 1878. In 1882 he was re-elected and has been elected to that incumbency ever since. He was married, in Carroll County, to Miss Margaret Peel, daughter of John W. Peel [see sketch elsewhere], and became the father of two sons and one daughter: Hubert N., a law student of promise; Jennie M. and Bob T. Judge Pittman is a member of the I. O. O. F., and Mrs. Pittman is a member of the Episcopal Church, and is an active worker in the same.