My Genealogy Hound

JUDGE ELISHA GOLAY departed this life, April 30, 1866, at the residence of his son, Constant Golay, near Vevay, Ind. The subject of this notice was born in the Canton of Leman, Switzerland, in Europe, October 26, 1783. In 1801 his father and mother, with their children — six sons and four daughters — left their native land for the United States with the intention of making the wilds of the then almost savage West their future home. The family remained in the State of New York a few years, and came to New Switzerland in 1804. In 1806 he was married to the youngest daughter of the Dufour family, with whom he lived a happy life for nearly sixty years. In 1807 he was appointed by W. H. Harrison, then governor of Indiana Territory, a lieutenant in the militia of then Dearborn County, and in 1810 he was appointed by the governor a justice of the peace for then Jefferson County. In the same year he was appointed by Gov. Posey a major in the militia. In 1813 or 1814 he was a representative in the Territorial Legislature, which met in Corydon. In 1816, and a short time before the battle of Tippecanoe, he was ordered to muster a company or battalion to rendezvous at Madison, and thence to march to and along the frontier of Jefferson County, to protect the then sparsely settled population from Indian depredations, which order was promptly obeyed to the satisfaction of the commanding officer, Col. Williamson Dunn. In 1817 he was appointed by Gen. A. A. Meek brigade quartermaster, to the rank of major, and in the same year, being the first year of the State government, he was elected and commissioned by Gov. Jennings a justice of the peace, which office he had also held by commission of Gov. Posey. In 1814, when the county was organized, he was appointed county agent, and in that capacity he contracted for the building of the first court house. In 1830 and 1837 he was elected one of the associate judges of the circuit court and served the full term of seven years under each election. In the discharge of the duties of the several offices with which he was intrusted, he acted with a view of doing his whole duty as a public officer without fear, or favor or affection, and thereby gained the esteem and approbation of his fellow citizens. As a husband he was kind and affectionate; as a father loving and indulgent; as a neighbor, generous and obliging; as a business man honest and upright in all his dealings with his fellow men. By industry, perseverance and frugality he lived to gather together quite a fortune, which he divided among his children, and died crowned with honor, in his eighty-third year.