EVENING POST ANNUAL, 1882
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
of the State Officers, Representatives in Congress, Governor’s Staff, and Senators and Members of the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut.
Published Annually.
Hartford, Conn.: Evening Post Association. 1882.
Pg. 166


WILLIAM COTHREN Representative for Woodbury, Litchfield County:

Of Woodbury, was born at Farmington, Maine, November 28, 1820. He prepared for college at the Farmington academy, and graduated at Bowdoin College, Maine, in 1843. He received his second degree, in course, at the same college, in 1846, and the degree of Master of Arts ad eundem, at Yale College, in 1847. He studied law under the direction of Hon. Robert Goodenough, of Farmington, Maine, a member of congress from his district, and Hon. Charles B. Phelps, of Woodbury, in this State. He went to Woodbury in 1844, and was admitted to the bar of Litchfield county in October, 1845, and has practiced law at Woodbury ever since. He ranks among the leading lawyers of the State. As a citizen he is public-spirited and generous. He was elected a county commissioner for Litchfield county at the May session of the General Assembly, in 1851, and senator of the sixteenth senatorial district, in 1855. In April, 1856, he was admitted an attorney and counselor of the United States Circuit Court, and on the 8th of March, 1865, he was admitted an attorney and counselor of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was elected corresponding member of the New England Historic-Genealogical Society, at Boston, Mass., May 5, 1847, and a member of the Connecticut Historical Society, November 23, 1852, of which, for many years, he has been a vice-president; an honorary member of the Old Colony Historical Society, at Plymouth, Mass., April 24, 1854; a corresponding member of the Wisconsin Historical Society, Jan. 17, 1855; a corresponding member of the Vermont Historical Society, February 3, 1860; a corresponding member of the Maine Historical Society, September 18, 1861; an honorary member of the Rutland County Historical Society, October 8, 1868, and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Alpha, of Maine, September 20, 1873. From the twentieth year of his age he has been a contributor, in prose and verse, to the press and magazines of the day. A short time after his settlement in Woodbury he turned his attention to the collection of the historical data of the town. The result has been the publication of an elaborate history of the town, in three volumes of twenty-five hundred pages. The first volume was issued in 1854, and was the pioneer work, as a full history of the town, that had been issued.