Draft:Robert G. Pike

Robert Gordon Pike (July 28, 1851 – January 9, 1917) was a justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court from 1896 to 1901.

Robert Gordon Pike, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, was born in Rollinsford, N. H., July 28, 1851, and was a descendant from John Pike, who emigrated from England and settled in Newbury, Mass., in 1635. The subject of this sketch is a lineal descendant and of the eighth generation. Among his ancestors was the Rev. James Pike, who preached his first sermon in 1726 in that part of Dover which forms now the town of Somersworth, where he continued to preach for over sixty years. One of his sons graduated from Harvard in 1776, was a celebrated scholar and mathematician, and the author of mathematical works. Judge Pike's maternal ancestor, who came to this country about 1631, was Humphrey Chadbourne, and his mother, Elizabeth M., was a lineal descendant of his family.

Judge Pike attended the common schools of Rollinsford and the Berwick Academy, where he fitted for college, entered Dartmouth in 1868 and graduated in 1872; engaged in civil engineering for a time and was one of the surveyors who ran the lines of the Dover and Portsmouth Railroad in 1873; was an assistant engineer on the Waltham Water Works, and was quite actively engaged in civil engineering and in teaching the South Berwick Grammar School until 1878, when he began the study of law in the office of the late Chief Justice Charles Doe; was admitted to the bar in March, 1881, and immediately began business in Dover, N. H., where he pursued a very active and lucrative practice. In 1887 he was elected solicitor for the county of Strafford, holding the office for a little over two terms. In 1893 he was appointed Judge of the Probate Court of Strafford County, which office he continued to hold until he became Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, April 14, 1896; was identified with educational interests in Strafford county quite extensively, and was Superintendent of Schools in Rollinsford for a full term, and declined a re-appointment; was a member of the school board in the city of Dover and declined re-appointment, was trustee of the Strafford Savings Bank from 1890 to 1896, and for a time a member of the water board of the city of Dover; a trustee of the Franklin Academy since September, 1883, and treasurer of that institution from August, 1884, to 1896.

It will thus be seen that Judge Pike was identified with educational and business interests, actively and continuously, from the time when he left college until he was appointed a member of the Supreme Court of the State. After the decease of Chief Justice Doe, Judge Carpenter was elevated to the office of Chief Justice, and Judge Pike was appointed to fill the vacancy occasioned by that change in the personnel of the court, and immediately entered upon the discharge of its duties.

In 1915, Pike was president of the New Hampshire Bar Association.

Pike died at his home in Dover, New Hampshire, at the age of 66.

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References

Category:1851 births Category:1917 deaths Category:Justices of the New Hampshire Supreme Court

This open draft remains in progress as of July 5, 2023.