| Six Hundred ThirtyFourth in the Famous People (FP) Series - Alexander Rives |
 |
Alexander Rives (June 17, 1806 – September 17, 1885) was a Virginia lawyer, politician, and federal judge. He was the son of Margaret J. Cabell and Robert Rives. Three of his brothers—Robert, Jr., George, and William Cabell Rives—also served in the General Assembly.
Politically, Rives like his brother William was a Democrat until 1840, then a Conservative, then a Whig, then a Republican. He opposed the secession of Virginia.
Rives married Isabella Bachem Wydown in 1829, and they had ten children before she died in 1861.
On December 19, 1866, he was elected as a judge on the Supreme Court of Appeals and remained on the court until 1869. In 1871, Rives was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant as judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia.
In 1878, Judge Rives took the controversial view that the exclusion of blacks from jury service in Virginia state courts was a violation of the Equal Protection rights of two criminal defendants, granting their petitions for habeas corpus relief. The Supreme Court agreed in principle with Rives, in Strauder v. West Virginia, but overruled his decision, ordering him to return jurisdiction over the petitioners to the Commonwealth. Over 100 years later, the Supreme Court ruled that even the use of peremptory challenges where exclusion was made on the basis of race was unconstitutional.
Strolling through the Squaw Creek Cemetery, I was startled as I came around the crepe myrtle tree and spotted the gravestone of Pat and Vida Faye Rives. Vida Rives was my grandmother's name and she named her only daughter, my aunt, Faye. This also explains how we came up with our geonic. It felt strange finding that so I decided this was where the cache needed to be. It's a small plastic jar just a little larger than a 35mm and about the size of a small spice container.
FP cemetery caches are always placed with regards to the location, so please be mindful of your presence here, watch where you step and be respectful of the residents interred here. Please carefully re-hide the container better to maintain the integrity of the cache.
Avoid the use of acronym only logs, one word logs, logs with only 'Found it' and cut-n-paste logs. You must sign the log to claim the find. No exceptions, no excuses. Blank logs, one word logs and emoticon logs will be deleted without notice.