New Hampshire’s Federal Trial Court Had One Judgeship for 189 Years. Eighteen Judges Have Held Its Seats Since 1789.

Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

The second judge on the court was the first official the U.S. Senate convicted and removed by impeachment. Congress added a second judgeship in 1978 and a third in 1990, and the wait from nomination to commission stretched from a few days to more than six months.

The Judiciary Act of 1789 made New Hampshire one federal judicial district and gave its district court one judge. For the next 189 years, that was the whole bench. Congress did not authorize a second judgeship until Oct. 20, 1978, and a third on Dec. 1, 1990. Three has been the number since.

Eighteen people have held those seats, according to the Federal Judicial Center’s Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges, the judiciary’s own record of every judge appointed under Article III of the Constitution. Twelve of them sat in the original 1789 seat. The first eight, from John Sullivan in 1789 to Aloysius J. Connor in 1944, carried the court from George Washington’s first term to Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration; Connor died in office in December 1967.

A one-judge court, and the judge it removed

Washington nominated Sullivan on Sept. 24, 1789, the day the Judiciary Act became law, and the Senate confirmed him two days later. The Federal Judicial Center’s biography lists Sullivan as a Continental Army major general, a delegate to the Continental Congress, New Hampshire’s attorney general, and the state’s president, the title it then gave its chief executive, in 1786–1787 and 1789. He chaired the 1788 New Hampshire convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. He died in office in January 1795.

His successor, John Pickering, had been the state’s president in 1790 and chief justice of its Superior Court of Judicature from 1790 to 1795. Washington put him on the federal bench in February 1795. The U.S. House impeached him on March 2, 1803, on charges the Federal Judicial Center summarizes as mental instability and intoxication on the bench, and the Senate convicted him and removed him from office on March 12, 1804. On the Senate’s list of impeachment cases, Pickering is the first official it found guilty and removed from office. The only earlier entry, Sen. William Blount, is listed for 1799 as expelled, with the charges dismissed.

Thomas Jefferson’s nominee, John Samuel Sherburne, was commissioned 14 days after Pickering’s removal and served until his death in 1830. Matthew Harvey, governor of New Hampshire in 1830, took the seat that year on a recess appointment from Andrew Jackson and held it until he died in 1866, 35 years later, the longest active service in the court’s history. Daniel Clark, a U.S. senator from New Hampshire from 1857 to 1866, was commissioned in 1866 and served until his death in 1891.

How the seats changed hands

Every one of the first six judges died in office or, in Pickering’s case, was removed. George F. Morris, a Harding appointee, was the first to take senior status, in 1943. Hugh H. Bownes, a former Laconia mayor and state Superior Court justice, was the first to leave for a higher court: Jimmy Carter put him on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1977. Norman H. Stahl followed him there in 1992, after a little more than two years on the district bench.

The court did not always sit in Concord. The Federal Judicial Center lists its meeting places as Exeter from 1789 to 1881, Portsmouth from 1789 to 1926, Concord from 1881, and Littleton from 1892.

The appointments also show how much longer the wait from nomination to commission became. Sullivan, Pickering, Sherburne, Clark and Edgar Aldrich were each commissioned within four days of nomination, and Morris within five. Harvey already held the seat on a recess appointment when Jackson formally nominated him. The Senate confirmed 15 of the 18 judges by voice vote; the directory lists the vote type for Morris as unknown. The two most recent appointees were confirmed by roll call: Landya B. McCafferty was confirmed 79 to 19 in December 2013, and Samantha D. Elliott 62 to 37 in December 2021. Joseph N. Laplante waited 198 days from nomination to commission in 2007, and McCafferty 208 days.

Three judgeships, and who has held them

A 1978 act of Congress, Public Law 95-486, gave New Hampshire its second seat, filled in April 1979 by Martin F. Loughlin. Public Law 101-650, enacted in 1990, added the third. In 1992 George H.W. Bush filled all three: Joseph A. DiClerico Jr. in August, then Paul J. Barbadoro and Steven J. McAuliffe on consecutive days in October. From Oct. 10, 1992, when McAuliffe’s commission issued, until DiClerico took senior status on March 15, 2007, all three active judges on the court were George H.W. Bush appointees.

McCafferty, commissioned in 2013, was the court’s first woman judge, 224 years after its first judge. Elliott, commissioned in 2021, was the second. As of the directory export downloaded Oct. 18, 2026, the active judges are Laplante, McCafferty and Elliott, who became chief judge in 2025. Barbadoro and McAuliffe are listed as senior judges, with no end to their service recorded. The judiciary’s vacancy list, updated Oct. 17, 2026, showed no vacancy in the District of New Hampshire.

Of the 18 judges, 11 were born in New Hampshire, by the directory’s birthplace records. Of the seven commissioned since 1990, two were. Presidents of both major parties have filled the seats: by the directory’s party labels, eight judges were appointed by Democratic presidents, seven by Republicans, one by Jefferson, whose party the directory calls Jeffersonian Republican, and two by Washington, for whom it lists no party.

Small by New England measure

In the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ table of authorized district judgeships, which runs through 2024, New Hampshire’s three matched Maine’s and Rhode Island’s. Vermont had two, Connecticut eight and Massachusetts 13. In 1960, each of the four smaller New England states had one.

When the Judicial Conference of the United States approved its judgeship recommendations in March 2025, the list covered 69 additional district judgeships in 25 districts, plus two for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. None was in New England. Granite State Report’s look at the court’s caseload found that each of New Hampshire’s three judgeships carried 281 weighted filings in the 12 months ending June 30, 2026, about half the national average of 584.

What the record does not show

The directory records appointments, dates and career histories. It does not measure how any judge ruled, and nothing in this article is a judgment on any judge’s work. The directory does not record whether or how often a senior judge hears cases. For the convention Sullivan chaired, see Granite State Report’s account of New Hampshire’s 1788 ratification vote.

— Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. Names, dates, appointing presidents, party labels, vote types, birthplaces and career histories of the judges are drawn from the Federal Judicial Center’s Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges, as exported Oct. 18, 2026, and the center’s legislative-history, meeting-place and impeachment pages for the court. Judgeship counts are from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ authorized-judgeship tables and the Judicial Conference’s 2025 recommendations; impeachment results are from the U.S. Senate’s list. Years of service, waiting times and counts are Granite State Report arithmetic from those dates.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.