BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Lawyer, judge, professor of law.
Douglass Boardman graduated from Yale in 1842 and then studied law. He
was admitted to the bar in 1845 and practiced law in Ithaca, New York. From
1848-1851 he served as District Attorney of Tompkins County, New York, and from
1852-1856 was County Judge. In 1856 he and Judge Francis M. Finch formed a law
partnership which continued until 1866 when Boardman was elected a justice of
the Supreme Court for the 6th district. He was a director of the First National
Bank of Ithaca from its organization in 1864 and became its president in 1884;
became a trustee of Cornell University in 1875; and was appointed Dean when the
Cornell Law School was organized. Judge Boardman retired from the Supreme Court
in 1887, and died in 1891.
