Ebenezer B. Sadler: A Judge Who Lived Without an Enemy

Judge Ebenezer B. Sadler was born at Grafton, Mass., on Nov. 16, 1808, and died March 25, 1888 in Rochester, New York. His mother died in Geneva, New York when Judge Sadler was not yet ten years old. He first studied law in the office of Hon. John Dickson, of West Bloomfield, New York.

In the summer of 1835, at age 26, E.B. Sadler took a stagecoach to Buffalo, and from there embarked for Sandusky. Soon after reaching Sandusky, he was admitted to the bar, and in 1836 formed a law partnership with F.D. Parish, which continued for eleven years.

He married Emily Webb, of West Bloomfield, New York, in 1843. Mrs. Sadler died of cholera in 1849, and Judge Sadler never re-married. His only child was C. Webb Sadler.

In 1844-1845 E. B. Sadler was mayor of Sandusky, and in 1847 he was appointed presiding judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the 13th Judicial Circuit, then embracing the counties of Erie, Huron, Sandusky, Ottawa, Lucas, Wood and Henry. He served in this capacity for five years. In 1852 he was the Whig candidate for Congress. In the years 1866-1867 he was State Senator from this district. He was the Sandusky Postmaster from 1869 to 1871. After the Civil War, E. B. Sadler was involved in several area railroads.

His obituary in the Sandusky Register March 27, 1888, indicates that E.B. Sadler was in politics originally an anti-slavery Whig. He became a Republican at the birth of that party. The obituary continues to say that Judge Sadler “was the friend of every good work, broad, liberal and charitable in his views, and ever ready to do others a kind turn even at the cost of his own comfort." In the HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY, edited by Lewis Cass Aldrich, it is stated that Ebenezer B. Sadler lived without an enemy.