Joseph B. Lancaster (father of William B. Lancaster and grandfather of Joseph B. Lancaster of Covington, Louisiana) was a member of the Supreme Court of Florida. His career is described in The Supreme Court of Florida and its Predecessors Courts, 1821-1917, published by University Press of Florida in 1998.
Born in Kentucky around 1790, Joseph B. Lancaster was the son of John and Catherine Miles Lancaster. He read law and won admission to the Kentucky bar. He practiced from offices in Bardstown and Lebanon. In 1815, he married Annie Blair, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. They moved from their hometown of Bardstown to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1822. The book speculates that Joseph's connections to a Bardstown friend, William Pope DuVal, brought him to Florida. DuVal became territorial governor of Florida that year. He appointed Joseph to become assistant secretary of East Florida's board of land commissioners. In 1825, Joseph was admitted to the bar of the the territorial court of appeals and appointed to the legislative council.
Joseph had other connections in Florida that smoothed his way in territorial politics. As time passed, his appointments and elections brought him greater responsibility through much of eastern and central Florida:
1826 -- appointed justice of the peace of St. Johns County (St. Augustine)
1827 -- appointed judge of Aluchua County (Gainesville)
1831 -- President Jackson appointed him the first collector of the Port of St. Johns in Jacksonsville
1833 -- elected chief clerk of the territorial council, the governing body of Florida
1839 -- elected by Duval County (Jacksonville) to the territorial house; served in 1840, 1842, 1843, and 1844. During the last two years, he presided over the house
1846 -- elected mayor of Jacksonville
1847 -- elected to the territorial house of representatives; the Whig majority elected him speaker of the house; his son, William B. Lancaster, was chosen as chief clerk. A resolution directed lawmakers to wear red roses on their left shoulders and christened the house chamber as the "House of Lancaster."
December 1847 -- elected judge of Florida's southern circuit; by right of law he sat on the Florida supreme court until 1850. Joseph continued to serve as circuit judge until 1852. His political enemies feared he would be a "political judge," but one opponent described him "as unswerving, impartial, prompt, discriminating and sagacious a Judge as he was conceded to have been as Speaker."
1853 -- lost reelection in Florida's first popular judicial election (previous elections were held in the house)
As a member of the Whig Party, Joseph lost power as the Whig Party drew its last breath in the state elections of 1852. He joined the American or Know Nothing Party although he rejected two well-known tenets of the party -- anti-Catholicism and anti-immigration. In February 1856, he ran and won the first election for mayor of Tampa. Joseph died November 25, 1856.
Ossian Bingley Hart, a future justice and governor of Florida, was Joseph's protege. After Joseph's death, Hart summarized his mentor's career in the Tampa Florida Peninsular: "Blest with a high order of intellects, with a heart full of kindly feelings, he was the comfort and pride of his family, the ornament of every social circle in which he mingled, and was eminently useful to the people of our State. As a lawyer few were his equals in point of talent, and in fidelity to those whose interests were in his hands; and, as a Judge, none more anxious that justice should be done. To say that he had none of the frailties of human nature, would be to call him perfect, which no man is, but I think I can truthfully say that he had less of those frailties than most men."
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