150 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. dent sincerity with which his convictions were formed and the unfaltering frankness with which they were uttered made him one of the most formidable debaters of that fearless body of statesmen to whom the issue of life or death for the Nation was committed. From 1861 to the close of the Rebellion he was chairman of the joint committee for the conduct of the war, and one of his bravest colleagues on that committee was Senator Zach Chandler, of Michigan. Mr. Wade was very near the Presidency of the United States in 1867. As president of the Senate he would have succeeded Andrew Johnson if the articles of impeachment had received the votes of only two more senators. During the proceedings of that high court he bore himself with the utmost dignity and decorum. At the close of his third term in the Senate, March 4, 1869, Mr. Wade resumed the practice of his profession and accepted the position of general counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad. His wife was Caroline Rosecranz, of Middletown, Connecticut, a relative of the distinguished general. His sons, James Franklin and Henry Parsons, both received commissions in the regular army. WILLIAM H. WEST, Bellefontaine. Honorable William H. West, formerly judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, is of English-Irish extraction. His father's ancestors were of William Penn's Colony of Quakers who settled on the Delaware, near Philadelphia, in 1682. His grandfather removed to the west shore of the Monongahela near Brownsville, prior to the Revolution, and there his father, Samuel West, was born in 1785. Concerning his mother's ancestors he has little information, except that they emigrated from the north of Ireland soon after the close of the Revolutionary War 'and settled near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where his mother was born. Both his paternal and maternal grandparents, with their families, settled in the territory of Ohio near Steubenville before the close of the last century, and they have long slept in the old churchyard of Island Creek above that city. In a few years his father returned to Pennsylvania, and upon attaining his majority, established himself in business at Millsborough, Washington county. Here William H. West was born on the 9th day of February, 1824. When he was six years old he came with his father's family to Ohio and settled on a small farm in Knox county, in a locality where the area of forest largely exceeded the cleared lands. In childhood, therefore, he experienced the joys and privations of pioneer life in the log cabin home. His first inspiration to learning was received in the primitive school-house of the clearing, illumined by the solar light admitted through oiled paper and the frontier schoolmaster's genius transmitted through the beech cudgel. or the ferule. Young West was favored with superior advantages, because his father's small collection of books was the largest library in the neighborhood, and he read all of them before reaching the age of fifteen. History, poetry, fiction and allegory were all treated copiously in the quaint collection. He read with more or less eagerness and enjoyment the History of the United States by Woodbridge, and BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 151 Bethune's History of France ; fragments of Shakespeare, Bobby Burns, Field-ing's novels, Æsop's Fables and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. His youthful intellect was not even palled by the remorseless dreariness of Hume's England. His imagination was cultivated early and his variety of reading gave him much to think about. His relish for books was keen when he entered the primary department of Martinsburg Academy, in the fall of 1840, and pursued his studies in the common school branches to qualify himself for teaching in the country districts. These he mastered with remarkable ease and rapidity, even before his aspiration for a classical education received much practical encouragement. He was, however, persuaded by his preceptor, Rev. Henry Hervey,. to remain away from the farm another term and take up the study of Latin as an experiment. To begin was to continue. He read the First Book of Caesar's Commentaries and was so charmed with it, from the "Omnis Gallia in tres partes divisa est " to the finis, that his resolution was formed to pursue his studies to the completion of a university course. He was obliged to rely upon himself for the means; but his tastes were moderate and his habits inexpensive. It was, therefore, easy for him to pay all necessary expenses with the wages received from teaching a part of the time. Within six years from the time he entered the academy in 1840 he was graduated from Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, as a Bachelor of Arts. The Junior and Senior years only were spent in the college ; but his instruction was not less thorough in the academy and his scholarship was undoubted, for he was able to divide the class honors with General A. B. Sharpe, of Pennsylvania, in a class of fifty-eight members. During his last year in Jefferson the college was presided over by the eminent Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, and after graduation he accompanied Dr. Breckinridge to Lexington, Kentucky, and took charge of a school in the neighborhood which the doctor had procured for him. A year later, associated with his classmate, Rev. G. Zahnizer, Mr. West assumed control of the Lexington High School for boys, and among his pupils were members of very distinguished families, including the Clays and the Breckinridges. It is almost certain Judge West received, unconsciously, while teaching at Lexington, the first inspiration to change his profession. The Bar of the city then contained in its membership some of the greatest lawyers and jurists the State of Kentucky has produced Henry Clay, General John C. Breckinridge, Matt Johnson, Chief Justice Robertson—and he was privileged to hear all of them in the bloodless combats of the forum. He heard .the last great popular address of Clay and the splendid oration of General Breckinridge, in 1848, at the memorial services for the volunteer soldiers of Kentucky who sacrificed their lives on the field of Buena Vista. It may readily be assumed the brilliant arguments before a jury, and the matchless eloquence of these masters on the platform, kindled new aspirations in the soul of the young school-teacher in whom were latent all the superb powers 'essential to masterful debate and sublime oratory. He could not remain long in the quiet occupation of teaching. After one year of service as tutor in Jefferson College and one year as 152 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. adjunct professor in Hampden Sidney College, Virginia, he resigned, returned to Ohio, and entered the office of Judge William Lawrence at Bellefontaine as a student of law, in August, 1850. He had just witnessed one of the memorable contests of the arena—the United States Senate—in which those mighty political gladiators, Benton, Clay and Webster, were discussing the fugitive slave law. He was accustomed to study; his mind was mature; his capacity to grasp and comprehend principles was large, and he made such rapid progress as to be qualified for admission to the Bar in 1851. He formed a partnership with Judge Lawrence by which he was at once introduced to a good practice. The following year he was elected prosecuting attorney of Logan county. As a student and teacher he had become proficient in the classics and higher mathematics. He was -especially fond of geometry, which has in its conception and construction more of logic than any other branch of mathematical science. And the mental dicipline acquired by the application of his knowledge of such branches in the art of teaching enabled him quickly to become formidable in the higher reasoning of the law. At thirty he was a good lawyer. At forty he was the peer of any in his circuit. His progress was facilitated all the while by association and contact with the great lawyers who gave character and prestige to the Bar of Bellefontaine and the circuit. To quote another biographer, among these were: " Benjamin Stanton, unsurpassed in his power of debate; C. W. B. Allison and Mr. James Keenan ; Colonel John H. James and the Corwins of Urbana; the courtly General Mason; General Charles Anthony; the brilliant William A. Rogers, of Springfield, and the eminent Richard A. Harrison, now of Columbus." No lawyer could maintain himself in such company without the severest labor. No, self-respecting, ambitious man would desire to continue his relations with a Bar whose membership was so far above him that . he could not occupy a position of comparative respectability. Judge West fortunately possessed the natural ability, the inclination, the will, the capacity for sedulous application, and all the qualities of mind essential to a clear understanding of the law and to fit him for high companionship. Without pretense or arrogance he quietly and certainly established his right to be in the first rank of the Bar. He continued in the practice, with slight interruptions on account of political service, until 1871, when he was elected a judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio. Few members of that court have entered upon judicial service better equipped by original power of intellect, integrity of character, broad and varied attainments, habit of patient investigation, honesty of purpose and the temperament which is best adapted to the duties of Appellate Court Judges. Unfortunately he was permitted to serve on the Bench only one year, when failing vision constrained him to resign. Despite this infirmity, by which the State was deprived of an able jurist, he resumed the practice of law, and has since achieved a higher reputation as a lawyer. A. remarkable memory is the substitute for lost vision to a marvelous degree, in the trial of a cause. He holds in mind the important facts in a cause and the testimony of witnesses on every point. He proceeds with a trial expedi-   BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 153 tiously, and in argument is able to arrange, classify and present the evidence in the most orderly and effective manner. No material fact is overlooked; no link in the chain of evidence is omitted. His original statement of a case is a plain and comprehensive epitome of what the evidence is expected to establish. His final argument is a masterful rehearsal of the evidence applied to the law, supplemented by the most cogent reasoning, in order to create in the minds of the jury that view of the case which is so clear in his own mind. In this he exhibits the wonderful power of the advocate. Furnished by exhaustive investigation with complete knowledge of the facts, which he has carefully digested and classified by meditation, and arranged among the treasures of his memory, he has undisputed mastery of the subject. Gifted with an active imagination, strong sympathy and the earnestness born of deep conviction, having at command a comprehensive vocabulary of choice Anglo-Saxon and expressive English words, he proceeds in a style great in its simplicity and clearness to reason with the jury. He is particularly strong in his facts and in his application of the law to the facts. In the discussions of legal questions before the court one cannot fail to be impressed with his clear discrimination of the nice distinctions of the law ; his accurate judgment in the construction and application of principles ; his clearness and definiteness of statement, made possible by the complete irradiation of his mind and a certain forceful style of reasoning Iran the base of an underlying principle, of which he has keen discernment. He is accustomed to study exhaustively both sides of a controversy, not only to fortify himself against any possible surprise during the trial of a cause, but in order to be able to state his adversary's contention strongly, so that he may combat it effectively with logic and law. He believes in the genius of work, and relies upon the laboratory of the mind for the analyzation of principles and the construction of theories. In the extent and variety of information, in the power of analysis and differentiation, and the felicity of expressing a proposition or an argument, Judge West has few equals at the Bar. Early in his career, as may naturally be expected of one so gifted in oratory, Judge West participated actively in politics. Starting out as a Whig, he became one of the founders of the Republican party in the State, and one of the founders of the first Republican newspaper in his county. In 1857 he was elected to represent his county in the State legislature. In 1860 he was chosen one of the delegates to the Republican National Convention held in Chicago, and he still regards the modest part which he took in the nomination of Lincoln for the Presidency as the proudest political service of his life. He was elected to the legislature of Ohio again in 1861, because the State demanded her wisest and best men for public service, in a crisis for which there was no precedent. In 1863 he was elected to the Senate, and so was continued in the general assembly throughout the war. He was influential in the legislation of this period for the honor of the State and the restoration of the Union. In 1865 he was elected attorney-general and served two terms. In 1869 he, was nominated by President Grant and confirmed by the Senate to represent the United 154 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. States as consul at Rio Janeiro, but declined to accept the position. After his judicial election and service already mentioned he was nominated in 1877 for governor, but the party suffered defeat. This terminated his political career and permitted him to give undivided allegiance to the law. In 1873 Judge West was a delegate to the convention to revise the Constitution of Ohio. Among the members of this convention, which comprised many great lawyers and jurists, were the late Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, ex-Governor George Hoadly, Rufus King, Sherlock J. Andrews, Cooper K. Watson, General Thomas Ewing and Lewis D. Campbell. As a political orator and debater he has attained very high rank. His public addresses are characterized by fluency, perspicacity, thoroughness and dignity. He prefers to be plain rather than ornate. And yet, on occasion, his imagery is beautiful and his manner impassioned. He has never fallen below the requirements of any occasion, or disappointed his friends. Possessing in a high degree true oratorical genius—the opulent imagination, the bright humor, the flashing wit, the quick sympathy, the finely modulated voice, the felicitous expression, the, earnest manner and the graceful action—he charms an audience by rhetorical declamation. His conception of the public address, however, gives it a character and a purpose above the amusement of those who hear. He believes it should contain ideas; impress a thought, or advocate a principle. Public discussion is one of the means ordained for the propagation of truth, for influencing the minds of men and directing their action in some practical way. He always has the public welfare in view. His diction is always pure. So cultivated is he in belles-lettres that his oratory would befit a college rostrum so deeply versed in the law and so skillful in the art of reasoning that his argument honors the forum. One of his really great political addresses was delivered in the National Convention of the Republican party at Chicago in 1884. He was a delegate from the State at large and had the honor of presenting for nomination the distinguished James G. Blaine. To the same convention John G. Long, of Massachusetts, seconded by George William Curtis, presented the name of Senator George F. Edmunds, and Honorable Joseph B. Foraker, at present a senator of the United States, presented the name of John Sherman, now secretary of state. Judge West has an ideal home, the center of genuine affection, confidence and happiness. He married, the first time in young manhood, Miss Elizabeth Williams, of Lima, who was a native of Wales, a woman of uncommon mental power and moral excellence. Three sons were born of this marriage, William A., John E. and Samuel A. The first two studied law and became associated with their father in practice at Bellefontaine, in the firm of West & West. The third son is deceased. His second marriage was with Mrs. Clara G. Gorton, widow of Ira M. Gorton, formerly of Columbus, and daughter of Mr. Abner Riddle, of Bellefontaine. She is a cultivated lady, whose cordial manner and genial temper are the flower of her great kindness of heart. Her attachment to her husband and his sons has ever been marked by deep devotion. Naturally benevolent, she devotes much of her independent means to charity, under the auspices of associations able to give BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 155 the contributions proper direction. Judge West remains young and keeps abreast of the progressive thought and material advancement of the time. Since the complete loss of his natural vision his intellectual vision appears to have become quickened, and his insight into things not seen appears to be keener and deeper. In his conceptions of private deportment and public duty, as revealed in social intercourse and official conduct, he belongs to earth's nobility. ALFRED S. DICKEY, deceased, Greenfield. Judge Alfred S. Dickey, who was born in Giles county, Tennessee, January 6, 1812, and died in Brown county, Ohio, when on a visit to his sister, Mrs. Eliza Kinkead, August -22, 1873, was one of the eminent and honored men of his profession. He was of Scotch-Irish extraction, and his character was enriched by the best elements which by common consent are attributed to the Scotch-Irish Presbyterian. His great-grandfather was John Dickey, and his great-grandmother, Martha McNealy, who were married in the north of Ireland, emigrated to the Colony of Virginia and settled in Albemarle county. From these historic ancestors descended the members of the Dickey family in Ohio who have won distinction in the profession of law and the ministry of the Gospel. Judge Thompson affirms that the whole family history was characterized by four prominent traits: " First, a strong Scotch-Irish Presbyterian religious faith ; second, firmness of purpose ; third, integrity ; fourth, abhorrence of slavery." When four years of age Alfred was brought to Ohio by his parents, who settled at South Salem, in Ross county. There he grew to manhood, receiving his education in the common schools and in the profession of teaching. The family was fortunately poor, and he developed the best traits of independent manhood by earning his own living while studying his profession. He was qualified for the practice of law by the time he attained his majority, and soon afterwards entered into a partnership which exercised a wholesome influence upon all of his subsequent life. It was a partnership approved by his heart and judg-ment—a union for life with Miss Emily Ann Mackerly, which was formally contracted in 1832. In 1838 he was elected prosecuting attorney of Fayette county, and in that office gave evidence of the possession of a legal mind and correct principles. It was the means of leading him into a bountiful practice, and introducing him to a large clientage, which remained with him so long as he continued at the Bar. In 1847 he removed to Greenfield, a location more convenient for the care of his practice, and one which afforded in its excellent academy better advantages for the education of his children. In 1858 he was appointed by Governor Chase to the office of Common Pleas judge of Ross, Highland and Fayette counties, to succeed Judge Sloan, resigned. He held this office by successive elections until 1871, and during the time lived in a beautiful home which he fitted up at Linden, Ross county. He was always generous and hospitable, entertaining with remarkable heartiness the hosts of friends and distinguished visitors who sought his home. He was a thoughtful, 156 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. affectionate husband, a devoted father. His domestic life was serene and happy. The confidence and trust and affection between himself and his wife never wavered. Their mutual sympathy and helpfulness were manifest in rearing and educating a family of three daughters and one son—the latter being Honorable Henry L. Dickey, of Greenfield. Judge Dickey in early life and on to middle age was a Democrat, who believed in the principles taught by the fathers and founders of the party. His love of freedom and hatred of the aggressions of slavery brought him into the Republican party upon its organization. His patriotism made him a firm supporter of the Union and the government during the Rebellion. He enjoyed the confidence of Chief Justice Chase, as evidenced by the latter's endorsement of letter addressed to the surgeon-general of the United States, recommending the appointment of Doctor Wilson to a position on the medical staff of the army. This endorsement was as follows : " I am well acquainted with Alfred S. Dickey, the writer of the within. He is an eminent judge in Ohio, and worthy of the great esteem in which he is held. S. P. Chase." The address of Honorable Richard A. Harrison, of Columbus, delivered at the memorial meeting of the Bar at Hillsboro, on the occasion of Judge Dickey's death, contains such a clear and fair estimate of his abilities and characteristics that the biographer cannot do better than reproduce it here. He said : " My personal acquaintance with Judge Dickey began a few weeks after I entered upon the practice of the law, nearly twenty-eight years since. The impression I formed of him, upon my first interview, was that he was a superior man. Our acquaintance soon ripened into intimacy. This continued without interruption or abatement until his decease. Thorough knowledge of him confirmed my first impression as to what manner' of man he was. Judge Dickey was a man of large mind, and it constantly grew in bulk. He was remarkable for his sound sense—an inestimable companion for either man or woman. He had an excellent mind for the law. His power of analysis was strong. In the investigation of a subject, his mind rejected the irrelevant and weak. He was fond of investigating and applying general principles. His mind pondered upon whatever subjects he undertook to examine, until he saw them in all their aspects and bearings. He endeavored in his investigations to keep clear of the ruts of commonplace, and to tread on the higher planes of thought. He did not decide until his judgment was thoroughly convinced. If he could not, on the first effort, find data upon which to base a satisfactory conclusion, he suspended his judgment for the time being, and renewed his process of pondering. He was an instance of the truth of a striking observation of a distinguished philosopher. There is, says he, much in this process of pondering and its results, which it is impossible to analyze. It is by a kind of inspiration that we rise from the wise and sedulous contemplation of facts to the principles on which they depend. The mind is, as it were, a photographic plate, which is gradually cleansed by the effort to think rightly, and which, when so cleansed, and not before, receives impressions from the light of truth.' Judge Dickey was cautious and deliberate in arriving at a decision when he did reach a BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 157 determination, he was hard to stir from it. Still, whenever he became convinced that any conclusion to which he had come was erroneous, he would frankly confess his error, and cheerfully embrace the truth, for truth's sake. He never tried to uphold an opinion by dogmatism ; if he could not maintain it by fair argument, he gave it up. He was a man of strong, substantive and lasting convictions ; and he maintained them with great, but unoffending firmness. No man who does not possess this mental and moral quality can become either a great lawyer or a great judge. But Judge Dickey was not one of that too numerous class who, because they choose to be positive, are therefore sure they have the truth. He loved knowledge, and upon its acquisition it seemed to become an immovable fixture in his mind. In the latter part of his life, he preferred to acquire it by observation, conversation and meditation, rather than much poring over books. He expressed the opinion to me more than once, that many of the law books which have in late years been published were gotten up chiefly to enable the authors, as well as the publishers, to make money; and that many of them tend rather to obscure and unsettle sound principles of law than to elucidate and establish them ; and are, therefore, fit things for a bonfire. Judge Dickey, during the years of his preparation for admission to the Bar, and for several years afterward, must have carefully and thoroughly studied the law as a science ; for, upon a state of facts being presented to him for legal solution, he would frequently solve the question as to the legal rights and responsibilities of the parties to the transaction, by the correct application of a general principle of law ; and this, too, without consulting a single authority. His suggestions upon novel or difficult law questions were always valuable, because he got at the precise point, cleared them of dross, and led you at' least in the direction of the right highway to the desired legal truth. Whilst he was at the Bar, Judge Dickey was a successful lawyer. He didn't degrade his profession by making merchandise of his legal knowledge and skill. He didn't ' run down' business, but let it seek him. He would not litigate a case, if he could well avoid it, when he thought his client would surely fail. He never encouraged a client who had not justice on his side. He preferred compromising controversies to bitterly litigating them. He seldom prepared any other brief than a reference to a few authorities, and he hardly ever prepared a written argument. He could think and reason orally with greater accuracy, clearness and force, than he could with a pen in his hand. On the trial of a case, he was master of the facts, understood the exact points in contest, and was prepared to discuss them intelligently and ably. He well knew how to put a point to the ' immortal twelve' so that it would have the most telling immediate effect and the most enduring influence. He was not regarded as an active practitioner. And the truth is, he was not an energetic man, physically; but he was a continual, earnest thinker. He was never mentally inactive nor unemployed. Judge Dickey had a just conception of the position and functions—the rights and duties—of the Bar; and he looked upon our profession as something above a mere occupation in which to make money. He not only 158 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. thought that underhand practices will fail in the end, but he detested such practices, because they are, in themselves, wrong and dishonorable, and bring the profession itself into disrepute. The last case argued by Judge Dickey was the Ross County Railroad Case,' before the Supreme Court. He understood thoroughly every question and point in the case, and discussed them clearly and forcibly. He held the opinion, from the close of the first consultation, prior to the commencement of the suit, until the final decree, that the ‘Boesel Act' was unconstitutional, and that the Supreme Court could not do otherwise than so declare it. He took a very lively interest in the case. and was much gratified with the result. He justly felt, no doubt, that he had not only rendered faithful and valuable service to his clients, but that he had really done the State some service.' Judge Dickey was a good judge. He had an eminently judicial cast of mind. He loved justice and desired that every case should, if practicable, be decided upon its substantial merits. Some practitioners in his court thought he was too much inclined to allow equitable views and considerations to enter into his decision of every question and every cause. A sound point, clearly stated by the weakest member of the Bar, had the same effect upon his judgment as it would have had if urged in argument by the strongest lawyer in his court. He was not often misled by fallacious propositions, however artfully and strongly put. Although he was not regarded as a ready man,' he was almost always prepared to give an intelligent and sensible decision upon the submission of a question to him. His instructions to the jury were plain and simple. Whilst he had a discriminating mind—a mind for which clear, nice distinctions were nutriment—still, as a magistrate, he seemed to think that too much refining destroys pure reason and interrupts the course of justice. Very few of his rulings or judgments were reversed. Nearly all of them that were carried to the Supreme Court were unanimously affirmed. On the Bench, at the Bar, and in every other position, he was of sterling integrity. The best court of equity is a good conscience.' But, above all, Judge Dickey was a true man. He was one of the most companionable men I ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was kind, genial, tolerant, and intelligent. He could interest, edify and divert any person, whether learned or illiterate, refined or rude, young or old. His conversation and discourse were characterized by solid sense and useful information, and oftentimes sparkled with seasonable wit and humor. Every one now in this court room can recall many of his flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table in a roar.' If any man who came into his company had any genuine wit or humor in his nature it would be brought out—it would catch of the judge's, as fire of fire. He took great interest in all current topics, and in whatever concerned the prosperity of the community in which he resided. He was always ready and gratified to aid in relieving the unfortunate or distressed. Judge Dickey loved his country, her Constitutions and institutions. He uniformly, during our late civil war, expressed to me a firm conviction that the country would weather the conflict of arms. Whatever apprehensions he had for our safety and welfare as a people, were based upon BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 159 speculations as to possible departures, after the conclusion of the contest, from the principles upon which our system of government is based, and the demoralization which seems always to result from a great war, and especially from a great civil war. Whatever were, at different times, his relations to the political parties of the country, he was always firmly of the opinion that the cardinal principles of government which he adopted early in life, and which constituted the traditional policy of the country, were just and sound. He was not, however, a believer in the infallibility of party leaders, nor in the perpetual existence of particular organizations. Judge Dickey was a sensitive man; his emotional nature was of fine fiber. Hence, he was easily affected by sharp or unkind words, or malicious criticism ; but he was not revengeful; his resentments were fleeting. He doubtless thought the most speedy and effectual, as well as the noblest, remedy for injuries is oblivion. He cherished his friends ; grappled them to his soul with hooks of steel.' And he seemed to regard them as a shield to his sensitive nature against harsh criticism and unjust censure. He was more charitable in his judgment of his fellow-men than they were in their judgment of him. In speaking of others, he acted on the principle that detraction is a sin against justice. He did not try to discover, and hold up for ridicule and execration, the foibles of any man, whether friend or foe. He was above the meanness of envy. He never sneered at that which he could not rival. He praised meritorious deeds, by whomsoever done. He was pleased when a young man came to the Bar, who gave promise of maintaining its proper standard of learning, honor and ability. Judge Dickey was unpretentious in his manners and in all his performances—another illustration of the truth that unpretending characters are rarely deficient. For a man of his age Judge Dickey was, when he died, of remarkably buoyant and elastic spirits. His genial disposition, and the enjoyment derived from the play of his wit and humor, had kept off, in a good degree, wrinkles from both body and spirit. In common with his friends, as well as himself, I hoped and expected many years of earthly happiness and usefulness were in reserve for him. But alas ! that hope and expectation van-ished—forever vanished, without warning, and in an instant of time." WILLIAM C. COOPER, Mount Vernon. Knox county has for more than half a century been noteworthy for the ability and high character of its Bar. The records of appellate courts, common report and the statements of the impartial historian substantiate the assertion. At all times there have been leaders of the Bar, lawyers who naturally and without inciting the envy of their brethren rose above them. There can be no impropriety, therefore, in saying that whenever the roll of the present members is called, not in the order of seniority, but in the order of recognized ability, the name of Honorable William C. Cooper must be among the first. Colonel Cooper is a resident of the city by right of birth and continuous habitancy for sixty-five years. He was born 160 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. December 18, 1832. His descent is Scotch-Irish from the ancestors of his mother, and American through a lineage of half a dozen 'generations on his father's side. His ancestors were modest but not undistinguished. His grandfather, Daniel Cooper, and his father, Thompson Cooper, were both natives of Butler county, Pennsylvania, although the family removed to Ohio in 1806, during the boyhood of the latter, and settled in Mount Vernon. The city was then little more than a small clearing in the forest, through which the highways were generally Indian trails or bridle paths. Daniel Cooper became captain of an Ohio volunteer company in active service during the War of 1812 and continued to reside in the county until his death, in 1841. Thompson Cooper, grown to manhood among the pioneers, became a leader in neighborhood affairs and politics. He served his fellow-citizens for thirty years as a justice of the peace and for eight years administered the affairs and executed the laws of the municipality, as mayor. The positions to which he was chosen by the free suffrage of his neighbors, term after term, evidence their confidence in his ability and character. None surpassed him in the virtues which make up manhood and respectability. None ever left a cleaner reputation for the employment of energies usefully, for the conservation of justice, honor and right living. He died in 1863, while serving as mayor of the city. William C. Cooper is the son of Thompson Cooper and Rebecca Craig, the latter a native of Washington county, Pennsylvania, and a woman whose ideas of truth, honor and duty were in conformity to the stern maxims and practices of her Scottish ancestry and qualified her admirably to train her sons for the responsibilities of life. He was educated in private schools and the Mount Vernon Academy. His vacations were spent at the various kinds of work on the farm, a healthful exercise, if taken in moderation, which hardens the muscles and strengthens the body. He gave his time to work ungrudgingly, as an essential part of his preparation for the active business of his profession. His heart was set on the law and he commenced the study of it before reaching his majority, under the instruction of Joseph W. Vance and James Smith, Jr. At twenty-two he was admitted to the Bar and soon afterwards became associated in a partnership with Mr. Vance, under whose instruction his course of reading had been pursued. The association was continued about ten years and then was broken only by the death of the senior member, who was killed on the battle field in 1864. Both members of the firm entered the volunteer service of the Union army and Colonel Vance was commanding a regiment at the time of his death. Mr. Cooper enlisted in the Fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry upon the first call for troops, and was elected first lieutenant of Company B. Going to the front, he continued in active service until January following and then resigned in order to look after the business of the firm and important personal matters. Early in 1864 he returned to the service for one hundred days, as colonel of the One Hundred and Forty-second Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and was in the Petersburg campaign. At the conclusion of this second term of enlistment he' returned home and resumed the practice of law alone, and then for• two years in partnership with Henry T. Porter and for eight years as head of the firm of BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 161 Cooper, Porter & Mitchell, the last named member being Lewis H. Mitchell. Ever since he was admitted to the Bar the practice of the law has been Colonel Cooper's chief. concern. In it he has prospered and succeeded. His solid attainments in the principles and the literature of the profession ; his acuteness in discernment; his knowledge of human nature; his capacity to see the larger aspects of anything and at the same time grasp all the details ; his familiarity with the hurly-burly of business affairs; his power of original thought; above all, the probity of his life and his saving common sense have combined to secure for him first place at the Bar. He has long excelled as a trial lawyer. In the management of a case in court no detail is overlooked ; no essential is omitted. He fortifies and guards every vulnerable point and his vigilance prevents surprises. Watchful and alert, he never loses an opportunity to take advantage of his adversary's mistake or inadvertence. In the sifting of evidence and the examination of witnesses he is skillful. In summing up evidence and massing his argument before a jury he is great. Before the war Colonel Cooper held the office of prosecuting attorney four years. He also served as mayor of Mount Vernon two terms, having been elected the first time in 1860. In 1871 he was elected a member of the legislature, served one term and declined a second nomination. He was for six years president of the board of education of the city of Mount Vernon and was for five years judge advocate general of the State of Ohio. These are the only civil offices ever held by him until he was elected to the Forty-ninth Congress in 1884. He was re-elected in 1886 and again in 1888, serving through the sessions of the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Congresses. His reputation as a lawyer gave him a standing which was maintained and advanced by the wisdom of his counsel in the committee room and his power in debate on the floor. He was not only a very able, but also a very useful member. He was a member of some of the most important committees of the House. During his first term the bill providing for the order of succession in the office of President was passed and he was a member of the committee in charge of the bill. His argument on the subject was masterful and patriotic. He was influential in the committees on elections, on territories, on banking and currency. Politically he has always been a Republican. He managed several campaigns as chairman of the State Central Committee and was the representative of the Republican party in Ohio in the National Committee from 1876 to 1884, during the period of greatest contention within the party. He was a delegate to the National Conventions in 1872 and 1880. He is an active member of the Grand Army of the Republic and has represented his State in the National Encampment on two occasions. Colonel Cooper is a man whose amiable traits give him boundless personal popularity. He was married in January, 1864, to Miss Eliza Russell, daughter of the distinguished physician, Dr. John W. Russell, who practiced his profession for sixty hears in Mount Vernon. Two daughters were born of the union. 162 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. ROELIFF BRINKERHOFF, Mansfield. General Brinkerhoff is descended from one of the oldest Knickerbocker families. He is the seventh generation in direct lineage from Joris Derickson Brinckerhoff, who emigrated from Dretland, Holland, settled in New Netherlands and became the progenitor of the family in America, establishing his home at Brooklyn. Many of the descendants of this first emigrant are still living on Long Island, and in the city of New York, and a few are scattered through the western States. The latter are generally the descendants of Hendrick, one of the sons of Joris, who settled in New Jersey and changed the orthography of the name by dropping the e before k. General Roeliff Brinkerhoff was born in Owasco, Cayuga county, New York, June 28, 1828. His grandfather was a native of Hackensack, New Jersey, but his father, George R. Brinkerhoff, was born in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His mother descended from the union of two historic families of France, Bouvier and DeMarat, Huguenots, who fled from the religious persecutions in their native France and found refuge among the tolerant Dutch of New Netherlands. The subject of this sketch was taught in the public schools of his native county during his early years and for a time attended the academy at Auburn. Among his fellow students in the academy were Roscoe Conkling and Frederick H. Seward. At sixteen he was a teacher in his native town. At seventeen he had charge of a school at Hendersonville, Tennessee. At nineteen he was a tutor at the Hermitage in the family of Andrew Jackson, Jr., where he remained three years. In 1850 he came north and became a student in the law office of his kinsman, Judge Jacob Brinkerhoff, at Mansfield, Ohio. In 1852 he was admitted to the Bar and continued to practice until the Rebellion broke out. Four years of the time, from June, 1855, to 1859, he was editor and proprietor of the Mansfield Herald. He entered the military service of the Union in September, 1861, as first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster of the Sixty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry. In November following he was promoted to the rank of captain and assistant quartermaster and stationed at Bardstown, Kentucky, during the winter. After Nashville was captured by the Union forces he was placed in charge of land and river transportation, with headquarters in that city. Thence he was ordered to the front and placed in charge of the field transportation of the Army of the Ohio, subsequent to the battle of Pittsburg Landing. When Corinth was taken he returned home on sick leave, and upon regaining health was ordered to Maine as chief quartermaster of the State. Subsequently he was transferred to Pitts_ burg, Pennsylvania, and placed in charge of transportaton and army stores. Thence he was sent to Washington as post quartermaster, where he remained until June, 1865. He was then promoted to the rank of colonel and made inspector of the quartermaster's department. In that capacity he remained on duty at the war office with Secretary Stanton until November, 1865, when he was ordered to Cincinnati as chief quartermaster of the department. In September, 1866, he was made brigadier general of volunteers by brevet, and declined a commission in the regular army, which was tendered. He was mustered out at his own request on the first of October, after a continuous BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 163 service of five years. Without delay he returned to Mansfield and resumed his law practice, which was continued until 1873, when he accepted the position of cashier and executive manager of the Mansfield Savings Bank, which he assisted in organizing. Later on he became its president and has had the executive management of that institution nearly a quarter of a century. General Brinkerhoff was one of the promoters, and a charter member of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, which he also served as president. For the last nineteen years he has been a member of the State Board of Charities and chairman of the board. He became a member of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections about twenty years ago, and has devoted much time as well as thought to the subject of prison management and reform. His broad and generous philanthropy has found its highest expression in the intelligent efforts to better the condition of the unfortunate and improve the methods of prison management. An important feature of this philanthropic work is the National Prison Association, organized first in 1870 and reorganized in 1884. General Brinkerhoff became a member of this association at the time it was reorganized, and has been devoted to the cause which it represents ever since that time. Since the death of ex-President Hayes in 1893, he has been president of the association. He delivered an eloquent address before the New York Prison Association on the occasion of its semi-centennial celebration, from which a paragraph is quoted : "In conclusion it is cheering to say that when we look back through the vista of fifty years and see what was and then consider what is, we are able to thank God and take courage and look forward with hopefulness to the future. In fact I am very sure that when the New York Prison Association celebrates its next semi-centennial anniversary, or rather its full centennial, those who participated will be able to chronicle even larger progress than we do now. When we remember how slow the processes of evolution are, and how many aeons of time it has taken to bring the earth to its present development, let us be hopeful and not doubtful, for we know that God lives and that the trend of humanity is upward and not downward. We may fail here through want of co-operation with the forces of the Infinite and lose our own reward, but God's elect shall not perish from the earth, and man's redemption shall surely come. As the great globe swings in its mighty orbit around the sun, and lifts its polar ice crowns into the dissolving summer, so let us have the faith to believe that in the grander cycles of human destiny the long and icy winter of humanity is evolving into the golden summer of the Son of Man." The plan of representing Ohio at the World's Columbian Exposition by the famous group of statuary in front of her State building was evolved by General Brinkerhoff as president of the Archaeological Society. He was chosen to deliver the oration on " Ohio Day," when the group was unveiled, and most eloquently did he portray the matchless valor and virtues of Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, of Chase and Stanton and Garfield. In 1895 he was a delegate, and chairman of the delegation, from the United States to the International Prison Congress held at Paris, France. In that Congress he delivered a public address on American Prison Systems, in which he found BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 163 service of five years. Without delay he returned to Mansfield and resumed his law practice, which was continued until 1873, when he accepted the position of cashier and executive manager of the Mansfield Savings Bank, which he assisted in organizing. Later on he became its president and has had the executive management of that institution nearly a quarter of a century. General Brinkerhoff was one of the promoters, and a charter member of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, which he also served as president. For the last nineteen years he has been a member of the State Board of Charities and chairman of the board. He became a member of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections about twenty years ago, and has devoted much time as well as thought to the subject of prison management and reform. His broad and generous philanthropy has found its highest expression in the intelligent efforts to better the condition of the unfortunate and improve the methods of prison management. An important feature of this philanthropic work is the National Prison Association, organized first in 1870 and reorganized in 1884. General Brinkerhoff became a member of this association at the time it was reorganized, and has been devoted to the cause which it represents ever since that time. Since the death of ex-President Hayes in 1893, he has been president of the association. He delivered an eloquent address before the New York Prison Association on the occasion of its semi-centennial celebration, from which a paragraph is quoted : "In conclusion it is cheering to say that when we look back through the vista of fifty years and see what was and then consider what is, we are able to thank God and take courage and look forward with hopefulness to the future. In fact I am very sure that when the New York Prison Association celebrates its next semi-centennial anniversary, or rather its full centennial, those who participated will be able to chronicle even larger progress than we do now. When we remember how slow the processes of evolution are, and how many aeons of time it has taken to bring the earth to its present development, let us be hopeful and not doubtful, for we know that God lives and that the trend of humanity is upward and not downward. We may fail here through want of co-operation with the forces of the Infinite and lose our own reward, but God's elect shall not perish from the earth, and man's redemption shall surely come. As the great globe swings in its mighty orbit around the sun, and lifts its polar ice crowns into the dissolving summer, so let us have the faith to believe that in the grander cycles of human destiny the long and icy winter of humanity is evolving into the golden summer of the Son of Man." The plan of representing Ohio at the World's Columbian Exposition by the famous group of statuary in front of her State building was evolved by General Brinkerhoff as president of the Archaeological Society. He was chosen to deliver the oration on " Ohio Day," when the group was unveiled, and most eloquently did he portray the matchless valor and virtues of Grant and Sherman and Sheridan, of Chase and Stanton and Garfield. In 1895 he was 4 delegate, and chairman of the delegation, from the United States to the International Prison Congress held at Paris, France. In that Congress he delivered a public address on American Prison Systems, in which he found 164 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO occasion to state a curious fact: That the three great prison systems of the world originated in the United States, viz., the separate system, which had its origin in Philadelphia ; the congregate system of associated labor by day and cellular separation by night, originated at Auburn ; the Elmira system, based upon the indeterminate sentence and conditional liberation. He made another speech on behalf of the American delegation in acknowledgment of a complimentary reference to Dr. E. C. Wines and his great services as a prison reformer. During his tour abroad General Brinkerhoff availed himself of the opportunity to visit the British and Continental prisons, and became acquainted with their methods of management. His observations were clearly set forth in a comprehensive report printed by the government at Washington, with the proceedings of the Congress. In March, 1897, he attended the sessions of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, at New Orleans, and delivered one of the principal addresses. As indicative of the trend of his mind the opening sentences of his address are quoted here: " Two years ago when I came into the city of London, on my way to the International Prison Congress in Paris, there was one place, with a memorial, that I desired above all others to visit. It was not the Tower of London, with its memories and memorials of historic events; it was not Westminster Abbey, with its countless statuary and costly monuments in honor of soldiers and statesmen and poets who had passed away ; it was not the British Museum, with its literary treasures or its vast collection of antiquities; on the contrary, what I wanted to see most of all was the statue of John Howard, in the Cathedral of St. Paul. Since the days of the great apostle to the Gentiles, all through the weary centuries down to the present, there has been no other man who has surpassed John Howard in enthusiasm for the betterment of mankind, or who had endured privations and sufferings for the good of others with an abandon more complete. I was not disappointed, as I feared I might be, for the statue of John Howard was not unworthy of him, and the closing sentence of its inscription was all that could be desired : He walked in an open, but unfrequented way to immortality.' As I came into London, so I came into New Orleans, for my mind was saturated with the memories of a man whose history I reviewed on my way down the river, and who, as an honored citizen of New Orleans, wrote his name among the immortals. It was not as a statesman that he impressed me, although as such he had but few equals in our country's history. It was not as a soldier, although, as the aid and military secretary of General Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, there was no man who rendered more essential service to his chief ; on the contrary, it was as author of the penal code for Louisiana, and as a philosopher in the requirements of penal discipline, that Edward Livingston ranks as the foremost pen ologist in American history, and I am not sure that he has any equal in the world's history." General Roeliff Brinkerhoff is a man of large abilities and great force of character. He is a clear, strong, earnest, forceful speaker, who understands what he says and puts his conscience into his work. His position as one of the foremost citizens of the State is fixed. He was married February 3, 1852, to Mary Lake Bently, of Mansfield, daughter of Baldwin Bently and granddaughter of General Robert Bently. Their family comprises four children, of whom the oldest, Robert, is a lawyer in New York City ; Adelaide resides BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 165 with her parents ; Mary, who married Colonel William McCrary, of Minneapolis, is deceased ; and Roeliff, the youngest, is the Probate Judge of Richland county. General Brinkerhoff is especially active as a Christian worker, and for more than a quarter of a century has been in charge of the senior Bible class of the Congregational Church. JOHN McINTYRE LEMMON, Clyde. The late Judge Lemmon, whose life for thirty years was so intimately related to the corporate life of his town and the public interests of his county, was a native of Ohio. He was born in Sandusky county, July 25, 1839, and died at his home in Clyde, August 17, 1895. He had scarcely reached the meridian when stricken by a painful and lingering disease from which death was a welcome release. Judge Lemmon was of Scotch-Irish extraction, the ancestors of his father, Uriah Blake Lemmon, having emigrated originally from Ireland, and the ancestors of his mother, Emily Amanda McIntyre, having come to America from Scotland. His father at an early day bought one hundred and twenty acres in the woods of Sandusky county, on which he cleared a farm and established .a home. The father had learned the trade of carpenter, and the exercise of his mechanical skill was observed in the construction of the comfortable hewed log house erected on his land, which was much more comfortable and palatial than the ordinary settler's cabin. It had two floors, one near the ground and the other just below the roof—reached by carpenter-made stairs instead of the customary ladder. All the space on either floor was included in one room, so that the dwelling had two rooms full size. In this house John McIntyre Lemmon was born, and in its attic chamber his boyhood nights were passed, with only the clap-board roof between him and the vaulted heavens. He probably assisted many a time as the winter approached in daubing the cracks anew with fresh clay mortar to hold the chinks in place and keep out the blizzards and render the living room habitable. He attended the country district school, and was studious at home ; so that before reaching the age of eighteen he was qualified for teaching, as evidenced by a license from the proper examiner. His special instruction up to this time, aside from the common school, had been obtained in a select school which he attended for six weeks. After teaching at Wales' Corners, on the South Ridge, four miles from Clyde, the winter prior to the eighteenth anniversary of his birthday, for a term of four months, he spent a year in Oberlin College, perfecting his education in English and mathematics. For two or three winters he was employed as teacher, and then went to Jefferson City, Missouri, where he took up the study of law in the office of James Proctor Knott, who was at the time attorney-general of the State. Although but twenty years of age, he was deeply impressed with the political questions of the day, especially the dominant issue of extending the institution of slavery into free territory. It was the time when that issue was fought out between the free Territory of Kansas and the slave State of Missouri, and young 166 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. Lemmon improved the opportunity to become acquainted with some of the principal actors in that bloody drama, and with others soon to become prominent in the rebellion. Among them were Stringfellow, the notorious leader of the " Border Ruffians," who controlled elections and made constitutions for Kansas; Sterling Price, the famous general ; and Claiborne Jackson, afterwards governor of the State. In April, 1860, he was called back to his home on account of the illness of a member of the family, and continued the study of law at Fremont, in the office of J. R Bartlett. He shared in the excitement and participated in the activities of the great Lincoln campaign, which joined more closely the issue between freedom and slavery to be fought out on the battlefield during the succeeding five years. Judge Lemmon also had an honorable part in that conflict. He was aroused from sleep the night following the attack on Fort Sumter by some young comrades or friends, who brought the news to his home at Fremont. He was among the first in his town to enlist, under the President's call for seventy-five thousand volunteers for three months. He enlisted in the Eighth Ohio Infantry, but was attacked with measles—which missed him in youth—and was unable to accompany his regiment into camp, but joined it later. October 9th of the same year he re-enlisted in Company B, Seventy-second regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, commanded by Colonel (afterwards General) Ralph Pomeroy Buckland. Ile not only set the example of patriotism by first enlisting himself, but devoted considerable time to recruiting, by attending public meetings, making public speeches and urging other young men to enter the army. He went to the front with his command in January, 1862, and was introduced to the activities of war only two days before reaching the bloody field of Shiloh. He participated in the fighting both days at Shiloh, and sustained no less than three wounds, two of which were received the first day—one a musket shot wound in the left arm, and the other by a spent ball on the right arm. The second day in the afternoon he was disabled by a shell from a Rebel battery, whose explosion hurled a piece of heavy timber against his side. The following month he was promoted from a private to the rank of second lieutenant, and just two months later received further promotion to a captaincy. He served until the war closed, all the time in the west. As a soldier he performed every duty faithfully and uncomplainingly. He was one of the intelligent, soldiers who comprehended the nature of the conflict, and did not underestimate the skill or courage of the enemy. Whether in the field, participating in the brilliant campaign against Vicksburg, or at the Siege of Corinth, or pursuing fugitive bushwhackers in Missouri, or in numerous engagements on the way to the Gulf, in Tennessee and Mississippi, he was the same brave soldier and modest officer, respected by superiors and honored by subordinates. He was detailed at Memphis for special service as judge advocate general, to conduct on behalf of the government the prosecution of civilians charged with violating the military regulations and the common law. The court was a military commission, composed of three officers detailed for the service, with the late Thomas M. Browne of Indiana, as BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 167. chairman, Some of the cases were of great importance, and in one instance at least, the death sentence pronounced by the commission was followed by the execution of three prisoners. This was the case of J. W. Smith, alias Dick Davis, a desperado who followed the army for purposes of plunder and robbery, who did not hesitate to commit murder for purposes of gain. Captain Lemmon was mustered out in June, 1865, a veteran who had seen three years of active service, and gained some experience in his profession. He settled in Clyde in the fall of 1865, and in 1866 was elected the first mayor of the town after its incorporation. Twenty-one years later, just when the city had become of age, he was again elected mayor. In January, 1865, he began the practice of law, with a wide general knowledge, much useful experience and a library of seven volumes. As it would be difficult for a young lawyer to succeed with a smaller library than this, it may be useful to state that it comprised the two volumes of Ohio Revised Statutes, Swan's Treatise, Ruil's Domestic Relation and one of Cruise on Real Property. He built up a business gradually, feeling his way carefully until able to stand alone and take care of the interests of his clients in any courts.. The clients came in due time and entrusted their cases to his management, until his business passed beyond the limits of Sandusky and rendered necessary his regular attendance at court in all the neighboring counties. In twenty years he had become one of the first lawyers in his section of the State, capable in knowledge of the law, successful in the management of litigation and strong in the confidence of the people. In 1886 his qualifications for judicial service were recognized by the governor in the appointment of him for the residue of the term of Judge Charles P. Wickham, resigned. By this appointment he became judge of the Common Pleas Court for the First Subdivision of the Fourth Judicial District of Ohio. The honor came without his solicitation and after he had' declined to accept a nomination for the same office as candidate of his party. He served only until a successor was chosen at the next election and qualified. He might have been his own successor, but declined again to accept the nomination. He preferred the general practice of a lawyer to the duties of a judge. The contests of the forum and the preparation of cases for trial, the counseling of clients and the details of office business were more to his liking than the equally laborious and less profitable judicial service on the Common Pleas Bench. fie was a man of affairs, successful in his ow.n business as well as in counseling others and managing for them contentions which have reached the acute stage when nothing will satisfy but an appeal to courts and juries. He was a good, safe lawyer, mindful always of interests, entrusted to him and honest in the discharge of a public trust or a private obligation. He was modestly a conspicuous citizen, whether estimated by his personal worth or professional standing. Starting without a classical education, he acquired liberal learning by constant reading and embellished it with culture obtained by travel. In the summer of 1877 he took a vacation and traveled extensively in Scotland, Wales, England and France, accompanied by his wife. Aside from this tour abroad he was always a busy man. The expression of 168 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. sorrow on account of his death voiced the genuine feeling of the community in which he was known, loved and honored for thirty years. Judge Lemmon left a widow and one son—the only child—Mack Lemmon, who occupies the beautiful suburban homestead ; who in 1892 married Miss Agnes Wilson, daughter of Rev. George E. Wilson. This union has been blessed and strengthened by calling into activity the affections awakened by the birth of a child. CHARLES H. SCRIBNER, Toledo. Judge Scribner is of English descent, although his ancestors became residents of New England nearly two and a half centuries ago. The founders of the American branch of the family emigrated from England and settled in Connecticut, near Norwalk, in 1665, and for many generations the place continued to be the family seat. Charles H. Scribner was born there October 20, 1826, the son of Asa Scribner and Esther Jelliff. His mother's family had lived in the same neighborhood for several generations. His maternal grandfather served with Washington in the Revolution. His paternal grandfather was a minute-man in the War of 1812, and served on Long Island Sound, in Connecticut. While he was yet a child his father's family removed to Newark, New Jersey, and remained there eight years. In 1838 he came to Ohio in advance of his parents, and lived with his grandfather, who had come west and settled in the State three years before. During the autumn of 1838 his parents followed and settled in the village of Homer, Licking county. After spending two years in Ohio at farm work and in the district schools, young Scribner returned to New Jersey, where he remained until 1842. He was sixteen years of age when he finally settled down to become a permanent resident of Ohio. He was diligent in the prosecution of studies in the winter schools and by the fireside at home in the winter evenings, at the same time continuing his work on the farm in season. In accordance with an established custom of the times, a custom to which is attributed much of the independence and manly self-reliance of influential men of the present generation, he became an apprentice in order to learn a useful trade. He was indentured at eighteen to a saddler and harness maker and while perfecting himself in the mechanical art he was acquiring a knowledge of the law. He aspired to occupy a kind of Bench different from that on which he learned to cover a saddle. tree, and fashion the plain, substantial harness for horses drawing the plow or the road wagon. His study of the law was under the tuition of Edmund Connelly, a member of the Licking county Bar, and he was obliged to walk four miles to recite his weekly lessons. His progress was so satisfactory that he was admitted to the Bar by the Supreme Court in October, 1848. Attracted by its superior advantages, he located at Mount Vernon to begin practice, where he enjoyed the benefit of association with the members of a very able Bar, some of whom afterwards became distinguished in public office as well as in the profession. Honorable Columbus Delano, secretary of the interior; BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 169 Judge R. C. Hurd, author of a treatise on the Law of Habeas Corpus ; Hosmer Curtis and Honorable Henry B. Curtis; Honorable Walter H. Smith, assistant attorney-general under President Grant ; William Windom, subsequently a senator of the United States from Minnesota and secretary of the treasury in two cabinets ; and Daniel B. Norton, also a United States senator from Minnesota---all were practicing lawyers at Mount Vernon when Judge Scribner became a member of the same Bar at the age of twenty-two. He was studious and ambitious, and therefore required little time to demonstrate his capacity and maintain himself in such company. In November, 1860, he formed a partnership with Honorable Henry B. Curtis, and the association was broken only by his change of residence after the expiration of about nineteen years. Within that period Mr. Scribner won an honorable position and enviable reputation in his profession. He participated actively in politics during the earlier years, and was the Democratic candidate for judge of the Common Pleas Court in 1861, in the subdivision composed of Knox, Licking and Delaware counties. While defeated by the Union movement, which increased the support of Republican candidates in that election, he carried Knox county, in spite of its majority of one thousand for the opposition ticket, and also carried Licking; but was, overborne by the immense majority of the opposition in Delaware county. In 1861 Mr. Scribner commenced his celebrated work on dower, which was completed in January, 1864. This work to-day is a standard authority on dower, both in the United States and England. In 1867 he was elected a member of the State Senate for the district comprising the counties of Knox, Morrow, Holmes and Wayne, and rendered efficient service as chairman of the judiciary committee. During the first session a special commission of three members was appointed to revise and codify the general laws relating to municipalities of the State. Mr. Scribner was appointed a member of this commission and was selected for its chairman. The duties of the committee were arduous and the labor imposed upon the chairman was particularly severe during the session of the legislature, occupying his time late into the night for several months. The labor was performed faithfully and thoroughly, however, and the codification bill reported embraced seven hundred thirty-two sections. It was enacted into law by the legislature substantially as reported. Thereupon a bill containing about two hundred and fifty sections, which had been prepared by Honorable Frank Hurd at the preceding session, was introduced by Senator Scribner, providing for a code of " Criminal Procedure" for the State. This, also, was finally adopted after a very earnest contest by its sponsor and friends. In January, 1869, Mr. Scribner removed to Toledo and entered into partnership with the late Frank Hurd, with whom as a member of the Knox county Bar he had long been on terms of intimate friendship. His law practice was large and remunerative, and the duties of his profession have continued to secure his undivided attention down to the present time. In 1873 he was elected one of the representatives of Lucas county in the convention held to revise the Constitution of the State, a position for which his broad knowledge of the law and the defects in the Con- 170 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. stitution qualified him peculiarly. 'His associate from Toledo in that convention was Judge Morrison R. Waite, who afterwards became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. His election as the nominee of the Democratic party was at once a tribute to his personal popularity and his liberal political views. It was largely due to the recognition of a sentiment that has always influenced his own political action in supporting candidates for municipal or judicial offices, viz., that character and fitness should have more consideration and weight than partnership. The normal Republican majority in Lucas county at the time was about one thousand. He was nominated the same year by the State convention of his party as a candidate for Judge of the Supreme Court, but the adverse partisan majority in the State was too strong to be overcome, although his gain over the ticket was large. The firm of Scribner & Hurd, and later the firm of Scribner, Hurd & Scribner, naturally had a clientage representative of the best men and largest interests in the city and the locality. They were counselors of profound ability and trial lawyers of eminent standing in the profession. The partnership relations were maintained until 1887, when Charles H. Scribner was elected circuit judge. The first term of five years demonstrated so clearly his high qualifications for the Bench that he was re-elected in 1892 for a second term. Judge Scribner possesses the deep learning, the keen discernment, the judicial temper, the impartial mind and the inflexible integrity which mark the upright and successful judge. He has the habits of a student and the capacity for application so essential in one who occupies the Appellate Bench. He is also favored by the culture which is acquired only by travel and observation. In 1883 he spent several months in Scotland and England. Two years later he suffered from nervous prostration which prevented attention to professional business and rendered desirable a change of climate with complete rest. After visiting Florida and other places in the South without relief, he made another voyage and spent some time on the shore of the Mediterranean at Cannes, France. While abroad he also visited England, Belgium and other European countries. With health restored he returned home in 1887 and was elected judge of the circuit. He was married October 20, 1847, to Miss Mary E. Morehouse, a native of Newark, New Jersey, whose parents were Ezra B. and Susan (Baldwin) Morehouse. Her grandfather was a soldier in the Revolution and for many years a pensioner on account of such service. The children of Judge Scribner are: Harvey, of Toledo; Charles E., of Chicago; Edwin M., of Bridgeport, Connecticut; Rollin H., of Toledo ; Gertrude E., wife of Charles E. Cone, of New York ; Marabelle, wife of J. M. Spencer, Toledo ; Josephine D., wife of Charles H. Gates, Toledo ; Jessie S., wife of Louis G. Richardson, of Chi cago. [Judge Scribner died February 23, 1897.] BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 171 RICHARD WAITE, Toledo. For the past forty years the subject of this biography has been a practicing attorney in Toledo, Ohio. He sprang from two noted Connecticut families, united by the marriage of Henry M. Waite to Maria Selden. The Waites emigrated from England and became settersl in Connecticut during the earliest colonial days, and some of them became distinguished, especially in law and jurisprudence. The Seldens also came from England in the dawn of the colonial period, and at least one member of the family, grandfather of Mr. Richard Waite's mother, held the rank of colonel and commanded a regiment in the Revolution. Richard Waite was the youngest of a family of eight children. His eldest brother was Morrison R. Waite, late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The second was George, who also adopted the profession of law and settled for practice at Troy, New York, where his great abilities and broad education soon enabled him to secure a prominent position. His career, which promised unusual brilliancy, was terminated by an early death. All three of the brothers were graduated from Yale and all of them inherited from their father, who was conspicuous in the profession, an overmastering taste and inclination to devote their lives to the calling for which they were so peculiarly fitted. The father held both political and judicial offices in his native State, where his entire life was passed. He served for many years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut with honorable distinction, and retired at the age of seventy with the confidence and respect of his fellow citizens. The subject of this sketch was prepared for college in some of the excellent academies of New England and in Williston Seminary at East Hampton, Massachusetts. Immediately after his graduation fromYale he came to the city of Toledo, where his brother, the late Chief Justice, had settled some years before to engage in the practice of law. Entering the office of his brother, he pursued his studies in the law until quali fled for practice, and after his admission to the Bar by the Supreme Court of Ohio formed a partnership with him, constituting the firm of M. R. R. Waite. This partnership was continued with great success until 1874, when the office of Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court was tendered the senior partner by President Grant. The business was, however, continued by the junior member and a son of the Chief Justice under the firm name of R. & E. T. Waite, and later, upon the death of the nephew, with O. B. Snider, under the present firm name of Waite & Snider. Mr. Waite has given all of his time and energies to the private practice of the law; has never engaged in politics or held political office ; has never been a candidate for judicial office or any other official position. When the Rebellion was raging and the call rang out for "three hundred thousand more" volunteers to support the Union cause, Mr. Waite responded. He enlisted in 1862 and was appointed captain of Company A, Eighty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, for three months. He was mustered out at the close of the term and in 1864 again entered the service, as captain of Company C, One Hundred and Thirtieth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, serving for one hundred days on the James river. in the campaign against Petersburg. He performed his military duty 172 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. modestly and faithfully, without ostentation or ambition for high rank. He has been satisfied with the opportunities and the rewards of his profession and has won very high standing among lawyers for the superior abilities displayed in the management of an office business. During the later years he has given much time to the settlement of large estates, for which his trustworthiness, sedulous attention to details and large capacity for application qualify him so admirably. The strength of his intellect, the vigor of his conscience, the depth and consistency of his convictions, the keen sense of responsibility, the exalted self-respect, known in the community with which he has so long been identified, invite that kind of business demanding the utmost fidelity and the profoundest regard for the rights of others. Mr. Waite is a member of the Loyal Legion, and of the Grand Army of the Republic-. He is also a member of the Episcopal Church, of which he became a communicant soon after locating in Toledo. He has always adhered to the Republican party. He was married in May, 1857, to Miss Alice J. Vooris, a native of Brooklyn. They have five children living. A judge who has known him long and intimately adds this concerning Mr. Waite : " He is altogether a different man from his great brother is an office lawyer and has achieved a very high standing both in court and office practice. He is a man of high character, esteemed by everybody a most cautious, careful and prudent lawyer. He has an excellent practice and has handled many important cases involving large interests and large estates. His capacity for detail, and his untiring diligence in the examination and preparation of his cases are apparently inexhaustible. As trustee or executor, and indeed in all matters connected with the handling of estates, I know of no man more thoroughly reliable, capable and worthy of confidence. He is a strong lawyer." WILLIAM BAKER, deceased, Toledo. For half a century William Baker lived and practiced law in Toledo. Locating there in 1844 in the vigor of robust young manhood, with a character strong in its integrity, and a love of the profession which he had chosen, he entered the lists in company with some who had already won fame or distinction at the Bar. His success was no less remarkable for its instantaneous achievement than for its constant growth and permanence. The story of his unpretentious life is interesting. Born in the State of Ohio at Norwalk, February 5, 1822, his home has always been in the State. His seventy-two years were honorably and usefully employed. His father was a New England man, native of Massachusetts, who settled at Norwalk in 1818 and became a prominent, influential citizen—a leader in the new settlement whose brain and muscle contributed much to the development of the frontier in its material resources, and the promotion of justice and learning in the land. His father was not a lawyer, in the breadth of knowledge of the books essential to successful practice, but he was a judge in active service for twenty-one years—associate judge of the Huron Court of Common Pleas three terms--active and zealous to promote the ends of justice. William Baker was BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 173 prepared for college at the Norwalk Academy, and was graduated with honors from Granville College, which subsequently became Dennison University. This was in 1S41, when he was nineteen years of age. For a year thereafter he studied law in Zanesville with Goddard & Converse, and then attended the Law School of Harvard University. It was in the red-letter days of that school when Joseph Story, the great interpreter of the Constitution, and Simon Greenleaf, the voluminous author of law text-books—qualified by the learning of the books, the wisdom of experience and the ripeness of age—expounded the law to young, ambitious students. He was fortunate indeed to sit at the feet of such teachers, and the opportunity was wisely improved. He was graduated from Harvard in 1844 and settled in Toledo the same year, to assume the responsibilities for which the universities had declared him competent and the Supreme Court of Ohio had granted him a certificate. Very soon he acquired a large practice and a lucrative business. He early displayed remarkable ability in the management and disposition of the cases that came to him. For the first three years he practiced alone, and then formed a partnership with Myron H. Tilden. The latter had been president judge of the Common Pleas Court of his district, and resigned in order to re-enter the practice. This partnership was dissolved after an existence of three years, on account of the removal of Judge Tilden to Cincinnati. He continued alone until 1857, when he became associated with William A. Collins. This association was maintained for thirteen years, until the elevation of Judge Collins to the Bench. For the next ten years Mr. Baker practiced alone, when his-son, Rufus H., who was a graduate of the Columbia College Law School, of New York, was received into a partnership. A year later Barton Smith was admitted to the firm, which was thereafter Baker, Smith & Baker, until the death of the senior partner in 1894. This firm had a very large arid very valuable practice. Mr. Baker was a lawyer of marked ability and unusual resources. The methodical habits which he had formed enabled him to give effective and practical expression to his knowledge of the law. Strong common sense and sound judgment completed and rounded out his superior qualifications. He was especially capable in real estate and commercial law and equity practice. His clearness in counsel, energy and promptness in the management of litigation, unyielding integrity in All matters of trust, and unswerving loyalty to the interests of a man whose cause he espoused, commended him to clients. The strength of his intellectual powers, the breadth and depth of his learning in the law, his demonstrated capacity for large affairs, attracted the notice of corporations, and afforded the basis of the great success which he achieved. The assemblage of faculties and union .of qualities in the formation of his character won the confidence of the representatives of capital seeking invest. ment. He was enabled to secure much of this for important public improvements. His judgment on investments was good, and he was actuated by a broad spirit in recommending them. Littleness or selfishness was foreign to his nature. The general good, the public welfare, was esteemed above any personal aggrandizement. He was not prevented by the restraint of vanity 174 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. from co-operating with any and all others whose chief aim was to promote the good of the people, the advancement of the community. He had time for work and enterprises whose benefits Are common and general. He was interested in the construction of two great lines of railroad between the East and the West : The Toledo, Norwalk & Cleveland (now the Lake Shore) and the Wabash. For fifteen years he served in the directory of the Wabash. He was also prominent and influential in organizing industries by means of manufacturing corporations. He loved literature and devoted some time to its study, despite the exacting demands of professional business. He was a believer in Christianity and a supporter of the instrumentalities for its advancement. His membership was in the Baptist Church, and his upright life illustrated the principles of the religion which he professed. Politically he was a Whig until the dissolution of that party, when he became a Republican. He was earnest in promoting the party policies, but never a candidate for political office. He was in no wise a self-seeker. He was married August 28, 1849, to Frances C., daughter of Peter Latimer, of Norwalk. Four sons and one daughter were born of this marriage: William L. Baker, a civil engineer and superintendent of the Detroit Bridge & Iron Works, who died in May, 1888 ; Herbert and Arthur, iron founders ; Rufus H., a lawyer and Partner of Barton Smith, Toledo ; and Katharine Baker, now Mrs. J. J. Manning, of Toledo. To the other accomplishments of Mr. Baker was added the culture which comes from travel. In 1882, accompanied by his wife, he made a tour of the entire continent of Europe, except Russia, and his mind was enriched by the treasures of history obtained by observation, and contact with historic places. He died in 1894, and left a spotless name as a heritage for his children. His memory is held in esteem by his brethren of the profession and the citizens of the city in which he was V permitted to live and work so long. In a memorial prepared by Barton Smith and read before the Ohio Bar Association, is the following : " Were I called upon to fix in a word William Baker's most striking qualities, I should say, unhesitatingly, his unfailing good sense and his remark. able •kindness and amiability. When difficult legal problems were presented to him he seemed always, as by intuition, to perceive the vital question, and point out the direct road to its solution. But above all was his gentle, unassuming kindness. A modesty so excessive as to amount almost to a vice, and a supersensitiveness to adverse criticism made him appear at first reticent, reserved and unapproachable ; but at heart he was to all as gentle as a woman and as kind as a father. In a close business intimacy of nearly fifteen years, I never heard William Baker say a harsh or unkind word to any one, or of any one. Of all, he spoke either good or not at all. The city of his adoption never had a firmer or more useful friend. It is no exaggeration to say that for more than forty years no important business enterprise was started in Toledo without his personal or pecuniary assistance. His life was active, happy, prosperous and useful. His declining years were brightened by duties well done, and by the hope of a glorious awakening to immortal life beyond the grave." BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO- 175 RUSH R. SLOANE, Sandusky. Rush R. Sloane, twice elected Probate Judge, was born September 18, 1828, at Sandusky, Ohio. His father, John N. Sloane, was a native of New York State and settled in Erie county at Sandusky in 1815. He was a good lawyer and attained success in the profession. His grandfather, William Sloane, was an officer in the American Revolution and died for his country with English bullets in his body. The grandfather, with his brother, John Sloane, first settled and named the town of Lyme, New Hampshire, in 1764. The. Sloanes were among the earlier English settlers of New England. His mother, Cynthia Strong, was a native of Massachusetts and a descendant of John Strong, of North Hampton, and her ancestor Caleb Strong was eighteen times governor of Massachusetts, and United States Senator. Mr. Sloane's earlier education was in private schools, and afterwards in the old Methodist Seminary at Norwalk. Leaving school at the age of sixteen, he entered the law office of Honorable F. D. Parish, who, with one exception, was the first and oldest lawyer who ever practiced at Sandusky and who succeeded Judge Sloane when he resigned the judgeship of the Probate Court. Young Sloane remained in Mr. Parish's office for five years, during which time he became well grounded in the principles of the law ; so when he arrived at the age of twenty-one, in September, 1849, he was admitted to practice. In 1852 he was admitted to the State Supreme Court and the United States District, Circuit and Supreme Courts. Upon his admission to the Bar he entered at once upon an active general practice, at first alone ; but later he formed a co-partnership with W. F. Converse, which continued for five years. After the dissolution of this partnership he continued alone until 1857, when he was elected judge of the Probate Court for Erie county. Upon the expiration of his first term he was re-elected in 1860, but resigned in 1861. He accepted a position tendered him by President Lincoln, as general agent at large of the Post Office Department, with headquarters at Chicago. At this time Chicago had a population of about 50,000 people, and by purchase of property in the business section of the city Judge Sloane laid the foundation of his fortune. He was largely instrumental in securing the election of John Sherman to the United States Senate the first time, in 1861, and again in 1866. In 1865 and 1866 he was chairman of the Republican State Central Committee. In 1872 he left the Republican party, and became a candidate for Congress on the Greeley ticket, and since that time has been a Democrat. In 1879 he was elected mayor of Sandusky. Judge Sloane was a zealous opponent of slavery, and he had the honor of preventing the kidnaping of six escaped slaves and was the only victim of the fugitive slave law of 1850. Judge Sloane has been most active in promoting the welfare of his native city, as well as the State's interests. He built the railroad between Columbus and Springfield, and was a director and one of the organizers of the railroad between Dayton and Cincinnati. The Mad River railroad, lying between Sandusky and Dayton, was built by him, and at different times he has been president and director in five railroad corporations. In recognition of his meritorious writings and donations, historical societies in several States have elected 176 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. him to honorary membership. He is now the vice-president of the Firelands Hostorical Society of Ohio. Judge Sloane is a lawyer of much force and ability, always displaying marked energy and determination in his undertakings. He has amassed a liberal fortune. He takes great pride in and has spent much money to beautify Sandusky. As a man he is gentle and charming in manner, always kind, considerate and congenial toward all with whom he is brought into contact. In 1854 Judge Sloane married Sarah E. Morrison, of Rochester, New York, and by this union there were two sons, Thomas M. Sloane, a lawyer at Sandusky, and Frank G. Sloane, late of the firm of Schoepfle & Sloane. In 1870 his wife died, and in 1874 he was again married to Helen F. Hall, of Elyria, Ohio. By this marriage there are two daughters, Helen S., now Mrs. John B. Ford, Jr., and Mary B., now in school. EMERY DAVIS POTTER, late of Toledo. Honorable Emery Davis Potter died February 12, 1896, in the ninety-second year of his age. He came of Puritan and Quaker stock, being the son of Abram Potter and Johanna Davis Potter, born in Providence, Rhode Island, October 7, 1804. His family removed from the Providence plantation to Otsego, New York, in 1806. The father's circumstances were not such as to provide the son with more than very limited educational advantages in childhood. As the result of persistent effort, however, the latter ere long 'was encouraged to expect a collegiate course, in which he was disappointed, and was compelled without such advantage to enter upon the chosen profession of the law. This he did in the office of John A. Dix and Abner Cook, Jr., two able lawyers of Cooperstown, New York,, the former having subsequently been governor of New York, United Stat senator from that State, and secretary of the treasury. Completing his studies, Mr. Potter was admitted to practice in New York, but soon deciding to make his home in the West, left for Toledo, where he arrived in the winter of 1834-5. Here he found a field not the most inviting in some respects for an ambitious young man, but one which he was not long in turning to the best account. His abilities as a lawyer soon attracted attention, while his active interest in public enterprises and political affairs gave him early prominence. In 1838 he was postmaster, and in 1839 was elected by the legislature as president judge of the Common Pleas Court for the Thirteenth Judicial District of Ohio embracing ten counties and covering northwestern Ohio. In those days there were no public means of conveyance, and he was compelled to travel from county to 'county on horseback, largely through a dense wilderness where frequently in the absence of bridges he was obliged to swim streams and to resort to methods of travel of which the present generation in that section have no remembrance. In 1843 he was nominated by the Democrats and elected to Congress from the district made up largely of the territory embraced within the judicial district. He at once took a prominent position in Congress, serving with John Quincy Adams upon the select committee on the Smithson will, BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 177 whose action led to the founding of the Smithsonian Institute. In 1847 he was elected representative in the Ohio legislature, where he acted largely as a leader of the Democratic side of the House. In October, 1848, he was elected to the Thirty-first Congress, where he took a specially prominent part in the long struggle for the speakership, receiving at different times seventy-eight, votes for that high office, and coming within three votes of being elected. He was made chairman of the committee on post offices and post roads, and as such was the author of the bill of 1851, providing for cheap postage and the coinage of the three-cent coin. At the close of his term in Congress he resumed the practice of law, and in 1857 was appointed judge of the Federal Court of Utah, but declined the honor. In 1859 he was appointed collector of customs for the Toledo district, serving until 1861. He was elected senator in the Ohio legislature in 1873, serving until 1875, where he was influential in securing the enactment of the law providing, at the expense of the State, for the propagation of fishes in Ohio. To his personal attention and good management the successful introduction and establishment of that policy of the State was largely due. He was mayor of the city of Toledo for the years 1847-8, at times a member of the common council of, the city, and its city solicitor, as also a member of the board of education. In stature he was six feet two inches and was of a large and powerful frame. He was of a genial and happy disposition, easy of approach; and with " malice toward' none and charity for all." Ills knowledge of affairs and men was most entensive. A companion of John Quincy Adams. he also enjoyed the acquaintance and friendship of Calhoun, Webster and Henry Clay. He was by the bedside and held the hand of the great Kentuckian when his spirit took its flight. He sat in judgment on the first case his fellow citizen, the late Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, tried and argued in court. He was a friend and co.npanion of Rufus P. Ranney and Allen G. Thurman. During the Rebellion he was a War Democrat, unflinching in his patriotism and devotion to the Union cause. His mental faculties . remained vigorous and unimpaired to the last hour of his life. His last public appearance was the delivery of an address at the laying of the corner stone of the new court house in Toledo. Judge Potter was married in 1843, to Miss Mary A. Card, of Willoughby, Ohio, who died in 1847, leaving one son, Emery D. Potter, Jr., now a prominent member of the Lucas county Bar. He was subsequently married to Miss Anna B. Milliken, of Pennsylvania, who, with one daughter, Miss Anna Claire Potter, is now living. Upon the death of Judge Potter there was called a largely attended meeting of the Toledo Bar Association, and after many tributes had been paid by old friends and acquaintances to his distinguished life and character, it was resolved, " that a memorial be presented to the several courts of Lucas county, and that they be requested to have the same entered upon their records, as a just tribute to the life and character of the deceased, and as enduring evidence of what may be accomplished by the young men of this favored land without the aid of help or prominent family influences, and as incentive to worthy effort, high aim and honorable living." The memorial concludes thus : " He departed full of years and with many honors. Still to add greater honor to his age than man could give him, he died fearing God." 178 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. IRWIN I. MILLARD, Toledo. Judge Millard was born near Tyro, Richland county, Ohio, December 9, 1838. His ancestors on his father's side, originally English and Welsh, lived in Pennsylvania for several generations. The first member of the family that emigrated to America was Thomas Millard, who came as the private secretary of William Penn, as shown by the family records. Rev. Thomas Millard, grandfather of the judge, was a Methodist preacher, who came to Ohio from Pennsylvania with his family, by the wagon route, in 1831, and settled on land which was then in Richland but subsequently became a part of Crawford county. He founded a Methodist church in the neighborhood and proclaimed the gospel there. When living in Chester county, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, he travelled over a large circuit and preached for many years. In his itinerary he became the friend and associate of the venerated Peter Cartwright, whom he frequently entertained at his home and with whom he travelled the circuit. This ancestor copied from the old family Bible, handed down from generation to generation, the data relating to genealogy and the connection between the first Millard emigrant to America and the founder of the Quaker colony at Philadelphia. Judge Millard's parents, Joseph Millard and Mollie Immel, were natives of Pennsylvania, the former of Chester county and the latter of Pottsville. His father was a mill owner and engaged in the milling business throughout his adult life, having located the site and built the first flour mill in that section of Ohio in which the family settled. It was run by water power, and many of the judge's tender recollections bind him to the locality and the old mill. Not long ago he found recreation in visiting the place, tracing the dimly outlined banks of the tail-race and other remains of a praiseworthy enterprise of the long ago, accredited to his father. His early education was received in the public schools of Greenfield, to which the family removed in his youth. When seventeen years of age he entered Fredericksburg Academy, attending a portion of each year and teaching school in winter, for a period of three years. The war to preserve the Union appealed successfully to his patri- otism. August 11, 1861, he enlisted in company I, Fifteenth Ohio Infantry, and proceeded to the front directly with his command. For a short time the regiment was on duty near Bowling Green, Kentucky. In November, only three months after his enlistment, he became seriously ill from exposure and was sent. to the general hospital at Louisville, where he remained until the following spring. His recovery was despaired of by the surgeons, and upon a certificate of disability he was discharged from the service and sent home from the hospital. Contrary to expectation, he did recover from that attack, after a confinement at home for more than a year; but as a result of the exposure in camp and field he has been subject to similar attacks at intervals during the last thirty-five years. Upon his first recovery he located in Toledo and served as deputy recorder of Lucas county one year. He was then employed for a year in the office of the Erie Railroad, and in the spring of 1865 he took up the study of law in the office of Bissell & Gorrill, where he spent two years in preparation for admission to the Bar. He was admitted BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 179 in the spring of 1867 and immediately became a member of the firm with which he had studied. This connection was maintained for twenty-three years, until the fall of 1890. The firm name Bissell & Gorrill was preserved throughout that long period, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Gorrill died in California more than twenty years ago. It was dissolved finally upon the death of Mr. Bissell, the senior member, in December, 1894. It was one of the strongest and most successful law firms in northwestern Ohio. All its mem hers were strong, capable men, well versed in the law and well known in the courts. They had their full proportion of the important litigation in all that section of the State for a quarter of a century. They also had charge of the legal business of the United States Rolling Stock Company for many years. In the fall of 1890 Mr. Millard was elected Probate Judge: He retired from the firm upon his assuming his judicial duties in the spring of 1891. Before the expiration of his first term of three years he was re-elected for a second, and in the fall of 1896 was again elected for a third term by a large majority and in the face of the fact that his party had always theretofore refused to nominate any man for a third term. He is peculiarly adapted to the business and responsibilities imposed upon a probate judge by his official oath. Learned in the law, courteous and urbane in his business intercourse, observant always of secrecy in the delicate and confidential relations incident to the settlement of estates, entirely trustworthy in the management of large financial interests—he is a model judge. His judicial record is his best eulogy. Judge Millard became a member of Forsyth Post, the first organization in his section of the State, very soon after the society of the Grand Army of the Republic was instituted. Afterwards his membership was transferred to Toledo Post, but his connection with the society has been continuous. He is an Episcopalian and a Republican. His first vote was cast for Lincoln in 1860 and he has followed it up by voting a Republican ticket at every election since that time. He was a member of the party councils and of the managing committee for many years, and chairman of the executive committee a part of the time. He has prudently refrained from partisan activity while on the Bench. He was married in 1863 to Miss Mary C. Keller, a native of Crawford county, a daughter of George and Susan Myers Keller, and a descendant of old families of Maryland and Pennsylvania, who became pioneer settlers in Ohio. Their family comprises four sons and three daughters. One of the eminent judges of Ohio contributes the following : "Judge Millard had many years of law office work and is a careful student of the law and an exceedingly competent lawyer. He is a diffident man of most kindly nature, and it would be difficult to find any one more fully and completely possessed of the qualifications that are called into action in the particular office that he holds. He is perfectly adjusted for it, has a kindly, sympathetic nature, so peculiarly adapted to meeting the emergencies of all occasions, which particularly fits him for the confidential and sympathetic relations that necessarily exist in connection with the Probate Court business." 180 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. HENRY DE H. WAITE, Toledo. The subject of this biography is descended from the families of Waite which for several generations have been honored in New England. His father was a native of Old Lyme, Connecticut, which was also the birthplace of his cousin, late Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite. He was born on Staten Island, New York, November 21, 1855. His parents were Theodore Waite and Sarah Wandell. His father was a merchant and broker of New York City prior to the war, and during that period, attending to business in the city while retaining his residence on the Island. Henry attended school in early boyhood on Staten Island, and later in the public schools of Toledo, where the family settled soon after the war. In 1875 he received an appointment to the National Military Academy at West Point and completed the prescribed course therein. He was graduated with the class of 1879 and the rank of second lieutenant, and was assigned to the; Fifth United States Cavalry. Joining his regiment in the West, he served with it on the plains, wherever threatened Indian outbreaks rendered its presence necessary, and in the State of Texas. In 1885 he entered the artillery school at Fort Monroe, Virginia, from which he was graduated two years later. In 1888 he received promotion and remained with the Fifth Cavalry for a year or more as first lieutenant. While in the field with his regiment in the Indian Territory in 1889 he received injuries which necessitated his retirement from the military service, and he was retired with the rank of first lieutenant. As a boy he had entered upon the study of law before his appointment to the Military Academy, and having left the army with an honorable record he resumed his long neglected studies and soon qualified himself for the legal profession. By heredity and inclination he was so nearly a lawyer that little time was required to gain a sufficient knowledge of the books to enable him to pass an examination. He entered the law school of W. C. Sprague while still suffering from injuries and at the same time was prosecuting his studies in the office of Harvey Scribner, Toledo. Thoroughly qualified by knowledge of the principles and familiarity with the standard text-books of the law, and still further equipped by the insight gained through observation and experience by employment in the office of a successful lawyer, he passed the examination before the Supreme Court Committee and was admitted to the Bar in October, 1893. Without any delay he entered into practice as a member of the firm of Scribner, Waite & Wackenheimer. Although he has not been engaged so long in the active practice of the law as many who are younger, yet he enjoys the equivalent of ten years of successful practice in the discipline incident to study in the Military Academy and service in the army ; the knowledge that comes of observation and travel ; the advantages that spring from high social intercourse, and the maturity of intellect and judgment as a foundation for technical and professional reading. He is, therefore, already a good lawyer. He is fortunate in the possession of broad scholarship and comparative freedom from prejudice. A. student of the law alone may acquire that technical knowledge which makes the narrow case lawyer and insures to him a considerable measure of success, but he never attains the breadth of view which BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 181 takes in the philosophy of the law and the underlying principles of jurisprudence. These are reserved for the lawyer whose studies have taken a wider range and who has added to the learning of the schools the knowledge of men and affairs the culture acquired by travel and observation. Mr. Waite has improved by these advantages. He has visited every section of the United States and almost every State. He has come in contact with a cosmopolitan population. The West with its broad expanse of prairies, its lofty mountains and splendid rivers, is as familiar to him as the alphabet. He has studied human nature in its busy marts and meditated in its solitudes. It has contributed to the breadth of his vision, the depth of his thought and the liberality of his religion. He has the acuteness and the self-poise essential to success in the contentions of the forum ; the discernment, discrimination and industry required for the more intricate work of the office. JAMES KENT HAMILTON, Toledo. Mr. Hamilton was born at Milan, Erie county, Ohio, on May 17, 1839. He is the son of Thomas and Sarah 0. Hamilton. His father was an influential and prominent merchant of Ohio, for many years being largely interested in the mercantile and shipping interests of Milan and Toledo. He was an active and prominent Whig, and for some time represented the Erie and Huron county district in the State Senate. James Kent Hamilton, the subject of this sketch, received his early education at Kenyon College, in this State, whence he graduated in 1859. He then taught school for some time, in the meantime studying law, beginning his studies in the office of the Honorable R. C. Hurd at Mount Vernon, and subsequently with the Honorable S. F. Taylor at Milan, and Mr. William Baker in Toledo. He was admitted to the practice of the law in 1862. During the period of his studies he had the oommon experiences of young men at that time, for he had to support himself by newspaper work, teaching school and other labors. All his feelings were in the Union cause. He was an ardent supporter of President Lincoln, and as the war at this time had assumed such an ominous character as to make very apparent the demand for resolute and vigorous men, he abandoned the Bar, to which he had been so recently admitted, for the wider field of patriotism and duty. He enlisted in the 113th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and served with this regiment until the close of the war, being promoted to regimental adjutant, and afterward to captain of Company D. With his regiment he participated in all the campaigns- of the Army of the Cumberland, and at Chickamauga he served as adjutant general and chief of staff of the brigade commanded by General John G. Mitchell. This brigade was one of the two which, under the immediate command of General Stedman, saved the Army of the Cumberland under General Thomas from annihilation upon the afternoon of September 20, 1883. Captain Hamilton was also in the battles of Missionary Ridge, in the Knoxville Campaign in the battles of Resaca, Rome, New Hope Church, Kenesaw Mountain, Peach Tree Creek, and in the 182 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. engagements in the vicinity of, and at, Atlanta. He marched to the sea with General W. T. Sherman, and afterwards served with his command in the campaigns through the Carolinas to Goldsborough and Richmond. He was in the last battles of the Army of the Cumberland at Averysborough and Bentonville, and participated in the grand review at Washington at the close of the war. Upon his return to Toledo he entered upon the practice of his profession. His qualities as a lawyer soon became known, while his active participation in public and political affairs gave him special prominence and influence. At an early day he was elected prosecuting attorney of the police court, after which he served four years as prosecuting attorney of the county, and subsequently four years more as solicitor for the city of Toledo. In 1887 he was elected mayor of Toledo, and was re-elected by a large majority in 1889 to the same important office. During his first term the agitation and discussion concerning the advisability of the city undertaking the construction of a line to the gas field, to supply the city with gas, became prominent. Mayor Hamilton opposed the adoption of the measure by voice and pen, but it received the approval of over sixty per cent of the vote of the people, and thereupon he entered actively and heartily into the work of carrying out the expressed desire of the citizens, and during his last term led the contest waged with the Standard Oil Company to assure its completion and success, and carry out the wishes and vote of the people. He is a firm believer in the principles of a republican form of government. He filled the executive chair of the city in a very able manner and greatly to the satisfaction of the entire people, each term of his administration being harmonious and popular. Mr. Hamilton is a man of keen foresight, cool, calm and deliberate in his judgment and in his actions. He is never demonstrative, and does not impress one as being what is usually termed enthusiastic. Yet there is about him an earnestness of purpose, a charm of manner and a cordiality of expression that makes him universally popular. As a lawyer he is well read, a judicious counselor, capable jurist and an effective and eloquent speaker. He is very impressive with a jury and possesses in a remarkable degree the happy faculty of winning the confidence as well as securing the earnest attention of the occupants of the jury box. In politics he is a staunch Republican, and gives his aid in every possible way that he considers conducive to the best interests of that party. Many prominent State and local officials owe much of their success to the assistance they have received from him and particularly to the able and eloquent manner in which he .has presented the name of a candidate to a nominating convention. In 1876 he formed a law partnership under the firm name of Hamilton & Ford, which continued until June 1, 1894, when it was terminated by the sudden death of Mr. Ford in Cincinnati. In November, 1895, he entered into the present existing partnership with George P. Kirby, under the style of Hamilton & Kirby, which firm occupies a high and honorable position at the Bar of the State and county. Mr. Hamilton has spent his life in public and in prominence, nearly all of it in Toledo, among old-time neighbors and friends as well as amongst the ever increasing numbers of new BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 183 arrivals, constantly adding to the diversity of opinion and interests incident to a large and rapidly growing city ; his kindly nature and high business qualifications have made him very popular with all classes. He is known and recognized as a brave soldier, an enterprising and loyal citizen, a faithful official and a man of sterling integrity and honor. He was married October 13, 1876, to Miss Sibyl Williams, a daughter of Joseph R. Williams, who was for many years very prominent in commercial circles of Ohio and Michigan. Mrs. Hamilton died in 1877. GEORGE E. SENEY, Tiffin. Judge Seney is the fifth generation. in lineal descent from Solomon Seney, who emigrated from England and settled on the eastern shore of Maryland about 1710. For more than a century succeeding that time the descendants of this first emigrant were prominent in public affairs in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York. And during the latter part of the present century they have been among the conspicuous and able men of Ohio. Captain John Seney, a son of Solomon, was a man active in affairs of his State before the Revolution, serving several times as a representative of Queen Ann county in the Maryland House of Delegates. At the beginning of the Revolution he entered the colonial army with the rank of captain. He received promotion successively as major, lieutenant colonel and colonel of a Maryland regiment. After the war he was again elected, and nine times re-elected, to the House of Delegates. His abilities and activities were directed in behalf of the formation of a Federal Union. He was a member of the Maryland convention to frame a State Constitution. He was also a member of the convention to which was submitted the question of ratifying the Constitution of the United States. His voice and vote, with his whole personal influence, favored such ratification. He enjoyed the distinction incident to membership in the electoral college which chose George Washington a second time for President of the United States. His son; Joshua Seney, who was the grandfather of Judge Seney, of Tiffin, was not less distinguished in the last years of the colony and the first years of the State of Maryland. His fame rests secure in the annals of Maryland. He was elected three times to membership in the House of Delegates, and was a worthy colleague of his father in that stately and patriotic body. He had the honor of being a member of the last Continental Congress, and the first and second Congresses of the United States after the formation of the Federal Union. He accepted a judgeship at Baltimore, which he resigned to make another successful race for Congress. His competitor was Major Hindman, a distinguished Federalist and a senator. It was a memorable contest between two great men truly representative of the Federalist and Democratic parties, respectively. The discussions were animated and argumentative rather than acrimonious. Mr. Seney died after that election before the Congress to which he was chosen assembled. His wife was the daughter of Commodore James Nicholson, one of the very distinguished naval heroes of the Revolution. Another daughter of the commodore married Albert Gallatin, the distinguished statesman of Pennsylvania 184 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. and secretary of the treasury under President Jefferson; a third was the wife of Colonel William Few, who was a member of the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States,. and afterward a' senator in Congress from the State of Georgia; a fourth was the wife of John Montgomery, of Maryland, then mayor of the city of Baltimore and afterward a representative from that State in the Congress of the United States. Joshua Seney, Jr., was the son of Joshua aforementioned and the grandson of Commodore Nicholson through his mother. He was born on the eastern shore of Maryland, orphaned at the age of four by the sudden death of his father, and taken by his mother to New York to live in the family of her father, the commodore. His education received careful supervision. He pursued the classical course in Columbia College to graduation, and completed the course in the Columbia Law School. At the age of eighteen he filled the delicate and responsible position of private secretary to Albert Gallatin, his uncle, while the latter was a member of Thomas Jefferson's cabinet. It was a most fortunate employment for him, in addition to the opportunity afforded at Washington for contact with the greatest men of the times. The vacation brought him to Gallatin's country seat at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where he met, loved, courted and married Ann Ebbert, a daughter of George Ebbert, a merchant of the town, and a descendant of a line of merchants of that name prominent in Philadelphia for several generations. Already qualified for the practice of law, he opened an office at Uniontown immediately after marriage and soon established himself as a lawyer. He devoted himself to the profession in the form of private practice, declining the appointment of United States district judge for the Western District of Pennsylvania, tendered him by President Jackson. In 1832 he removed with his young family to Tiffin, Ohio, where he lived twenty-two years. He possessed large natural abilities, with the supplementary advantages of education and culture. He was generous and liberal, a lawyer of unusual capacity but inclined to ease; a politician of rare shrewdness and foresight; generous to aid an aspiring friend, little inclined to seek advancement for himself in politics; and yet he held political office at different times; was clerk of the Supreme Court for several years and treas. urer of his county four years. He possessed in a high degree the attributes of a polished gentleman, accustomed to the best society without having learned the practical uses and the value of money in the school of necessity. Judge George Ebbert Seney was the third child mid eldest son of Joshua Seney and Ann Ebbert. He was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, May 29, 1832, and brought to Ohio by his parents the same year. His father and mother were educated and cultured and he was thus favored with unusual advantages at home. Tiffin was only a village, but the schools were as good as any on the frontier. In these he was prepared for the academic studies which he pursued in the seminary at Norwalk. He spent four years in this seminary when it was enjoying a season of great prosperity and its highest reputation under the presidency of Dr. Ed ward Thompson, who was afterwards a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was thus matured under most beneficial influences of BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO- 185 the family and the schools. His mother was a beautiful woman, whose life exemplified a high type of Christianity and whose memory is blessed because of her abounding charities and unfailing goodness. At the conclusion of his school life there was a sharp conflict between his inherited tendencies. The mercantile instinct, derived from a long line of successful ancestral merchants, contended with the professional talents transmitted through his father from ancestors distinguished as jurists and statesmen. For a brief period he tried merchandising as the partner of his uncle, George Ebbert, in a book store, and then made arrangements to go into a wholesale dry goods house in St. Louis. It seemed for a time there was more Ebbert than Seney in the assemblage and association of his faculties. His parents were united, however, in the desire that he should be a lawyer, and yielding to their persuasion, he changed his plans and began the study of law in the office of Luther A. Hall, of Tiffin. He entered the office on probation, for the term of three months, at the end of which he was to have the option of continuing in the law, or resuming mercantile pursuits. Fortunately he became enamored of the books the first day and his purpose was formed. From that time to the present his love of the profession has kept his purpose axed and irrevocable. Assiduous study for two years qualified him for admission to the Bar and he was admitted in 1853. After a partnership of two years with Mr. Hall he established himself alone, and was soon able to meet and cope with the best practitioners in that section of the State. A large clientage and profitable business resulted. He was not long in establishing a reputation as a. good lawyer — careful and strong in his pleadings ; painstaking in his examination of the law ; capable and shrewd in the trial of a cause ; able, eloquent and forceful in argument before a jury. At the age of twenty-six he was elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas and served on the Bench a term of five years with satisfaction to litigants and lawyers, and honor to himself. He worked hard and conscientiously. He possessed, the qualities which commend a judge patience and gravity, dignity and courtesy, urbanity in demeanor, a high sense of justice, a desire to be right and the application required for careful research and investigation to ascertain the law applicable to a case. It is an incident worth recording that Judge Morrison R. Waite, of Toledo, afterwards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was the first lawyer to argue. a case before him. While on the Bench he grew in popular esteem as a lawyer, and after leaving it his field of practice was much enlarged. He prepared and published Seney's Ohio Code, a work involving large labor as well as much lawyer-like ability and facility of expression in writing. This publication is regarded a valuable aid to lawyers who practice in the State courts. Judge Seney's military record deserves brief mention. He was a War Democrat, uncompromising in his opposition to secession, unswerving in hiss devotion to the Union. On the expiration of his term as judge he. enlisted in the One Hundred and First Ohio Volunteer Infantry, was commissioned first lieutenant and with the assistance of. three others recruited a thousand men in thirty-eight days. He was appointed quartermaster and, served two and a half 186 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. years in the field — under Commanders Buell, Rosecranz, Thomas and Sherman. He was in the engagements at Perryville, Lancaster, Nashville and Knob Gap, and heard the guns at Stone River. He was with the regiment in the line of his duty at Chickamauga and Chattanooga and Franklin; and with Sherman in his triumphal march from Mission Ridge to Atlanta. He resigned in December, 1864, and resumed the practice of law. No man enjoyed assiduous application more than he in the researches required to solve the knotty problems of the law, and discover the niceties and intricate discriminations in construction. Whether or not he really liked the hard work, usually continued far into the night, there is no questioning the fact that he enjoyed with the keenest zest the triumphs resulting from such work. He prepared his cases with unusual care ; studied the evidence so thoroughly as to know just how much to present and the order of its presentation ; guarded well all the points in a trial and summed up before the jury in a compact argument the facts and circumstances brought out in evidence, giving a clear exposition of his view of the law when necessary. He has uniformly been a safe counselor as well as a successful trial lawyer. In all of his intercourse with professional associates he is the very soul and spirit of courtesy—too refined to offend; too much of a gentleman to be rude. .During the more active period of his life in the practice of law Judge Seney held himself aloof from active participation in politics—as much as a man of influence and ability in the discussion of public questions who has strong convictions may do. Never an office-seeker, he did not refuse to speak for his party in a political campaign or attend its conventions for the nomination of candidates. In 1856 he was a candidate for Presidential elector on the Democratic ticket, and later declined the appointment as United States district attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, tendered him by President Buchanan. In 1874, in spite of his protest, he was unanimously nominated by his party as a candidate for Congress, but declining to enter the canvass actively, was defeated by a meager plurality of 139 votes. In 1876 he was a delegate to the convention which nominated Samuel J. Tilden for President. He was president of the Democratic State Convention assembled at Cleveland, in July, 1887. In 1882 he accepted a nomination-for Congress and was elected by a large majority. He was re-elected by increased majorities in 1884, 1886 and 1888, serving from March, 1883, to March, 1891, and declined to be a candidate for a fifth term. His reputation as a lawyer and jurist gave him standing in the Congress at the opening of his service. He was appointed to membership on the judiciary committee—a marked honor for a new member—and devoted himself to the public interests with the same fidelity which had characterized his devotion to clients or the prosecution of his own business. He performed his duty in committee and on the floor with becoming modesty and dignity. His more noteworthy speeches in Congress were on the following subjects : Presidential Succession, Treasury Surplus, Trade Dollar Redemption, Internal Revenue, Taxation, National Bank Note Circulation, System of Bankruptcy, Against Government Interference in State BENCH AND BAR OP OHIO - 187 School Systems, Refunding Direct Tax, French Spoliation Claims, Reconstruction of Federal Courts, and our relations with Canada. Twice during his congressional career the press endeavored to make him a candidate for governor, but his consent to be a candidate could never be obtained. He was strongly urged by many prominent men of his party as the compromise candidate for United States Senator, when the contest between the supporters of Senator Pendleton and those opposed to him became bitter. The surprising strength developed by Henry B. Payne, giving him the nomination in caucus on the first ballot, alone prevented the consummation of the plan of the men who favored harmony. Again in 1890 the friends of Judge Seney supported him as the fittest man in the party to represent Ohio in the United States Senate. Leading newspapers favored his candidacy and referred to his high qualifications ; but a majority of the caucus voted for Calvin S. Brice on the first ballot. The judge remained a passive spectator of the contest, neither working for his own advancement nor declining the positibn before it was tendered. It was contrary to the habit of his life and not consistent with his views of propriety to be self-seeking, or engage in an unseemly contest for his own preferment within the party. His serious views of the duties and responsibilities of a public officer are such that he must regard as undignified a personal contest for exalted office, whose incumbent should represent, the sentiment and unpurchased support of his constituents. Soon after the close of his fourth and last term in Congress he was one of ,three commissioners appointed by the secretary of the treasury to represent the government in the location of the public building at Kansas City, Missouri ; and later he was appointed by the governor of Ohio a delegate from Ohio to the conference held in Chicago to consider the subject of unlawful trusts. As a citizen Judge Seney has promoted the interests of his town in various ways. Always liberal and public-spirited, his activities have found expression in support of enterprises which advance the material interests. Though not a member of any church, he has aided with his purse in the building of many and contributed unsparingly to the support of public worship. He has been successful in financial affairs and accumulated a competence for himself. He organized the Tiffin Savings Bank in 1890 and has been its president continuously. He also organized the Tiffin Electric Light Company and assisted in the organization of the Tiffin Gas Light Company, and is the president of both corporations. WILLIAM D. HILL, Defiance. Honorable William D. Hill is descended from brave and patriotic ancestors. His great-grandfathers on both sides were soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and his grandfathers rendered honorable military service in the second war with England-1812. he was born October 1, 1833, in Nelson county, Virginia, the eldest of eleven children, of parents who were both natives of that State. The family emigrated to Ohio when he was sixteen years of age and settled on a farm in Greene county. 188 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. Being the oldest boy, the largest measure of responsibility naturally fell upon him. He had charge of the farm, and managed it until he came of age. During his minority he was able to acquire a common school education, but now that he was free to act for himself he set about the work of improving and enlarging his scholastic attainments. In 1853, having purchased a scholarship, he entered Antioch College, at Yellow Springs, Ohio, then under the presidency of Horace Mann, one of the greatest educators of the age. This institution was the first successful experiment on a gigantic scale of opening a college of the highest grade on equal terms to both sexes. Mr. Hill remained in Antioch as a student three years, supporting himself meanwhile by manual labor of various kinds and by teaching. Politics had a charm for him before he became a voter. He delivered his first public speech from the stump in 1852, when he was only nineteen, as an advocate of the Democratic party and ticket. In 1854 he canvassed Greene county in opposition to the Know-nothing movement, which culminated in the political campaign of that year. Mr. Hill was poor, but independent and self- reliant. He must read the newspapers in order to be informed in current politics, but would not borrow another man's paper. He therefore sawed wood at night to earn money with which to pay his subscription to the Cincinnati Enquirer. After he had studied law under the late J. M. Hunt, of Springfield, as preceptor, he ventured into the newspaper business as editor and proprietor of the Ohio Press, successor of the Democratic Expositor. The venture paid no dividends in cash, but during its continuance of two years the editor made an acquisition of considerable experience—and some debts. He was admitted to the Bar in 1860, and the following year formed the firm of Hill & Snyder. The same year he was elected mayor of Springfield, defeating James L. Torbert, a popular leader of the Republicans, and in face of a strong Republican sentiment. In June, 1863, he removed to Defiance, and the next year canvassed the congressional district in behalf of General Americus V. Rice, the Democratic candidate, whose illness confined him to his home. This campaign, against the late Governor J. M. Ashley, brought him into political prominence at once. In 1865 he was elected to the State legislature as the Democratic candidate, overcoming a large adverse vote and securing a majority above two hundred. In 1867 he was re-elected, and in 1869 he made a general canvass of neighboring counties, by invitation of the State committee. He rendered effective service on the stump in the gubernatorial campaigns of 1871 and 1873, and rejoiced in the election of his old friend William Allen to the office of. governor in 1873. In 1875 Governor Allen appointed him superintendent of insurance in the State. The appointment was made without solicitation on his part, and against powerful interests and influences in favor of other candidates. He declined a reappointment after serving in that office three years. July 4, 1878, Mr. Hill was nominated as the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Sixth District, and in October following was elected. In 1882 he was again nominated and elected over the Republican candidate, Colonel J. H. Bingham, a strong and BENCH AND BAR, OP OHIO - 189 popular man, especially influential among the farmers of the State Grange. In this election his majority was seven hundred and fifty-four, and the gain over his party's ticket more than five hundred votes. The district bad given a Republican majority of nine hundred and eighteen the previous year. He was re-elected in 1884, so that his service as a member of Congress covered a period of six years. In 1880 he was a delegate to the National Democratic Convention that nominated General Hancock for President. Mr. Hill continued the practice of law at Defiance until 1891, when impaired health occasioned the experiment of a change of climate. For the succeeding four years he remained in Montana, engaged in the business of his profession, and in 1895 returned to his home in Defiance and soon afterwards formed a partnership with Judge Henry C. Baker. His large abilities, broad knowledge of the law and varied experiences in public life ; his acquaintance with men and affairs, added to the discriminating insight into human nature which comes of close observation and familiar study, are among the sources of his power with a jury. He is both capable and successful in general practice. Mr. Hill was married June 3, 1862, to Augusta B. March, whose mother was one of the young girls of Camden, South Carolina, that strewed the path of General La Fayette with flowers on the occasion of his visit to the town in 1824; whose father, Thomas C. March, a native of Maine, went to Alabama at the age of nineteen, engaged in business at the South and accumulated a fortune, remaining there until about 1858, when, foreseeing a probable rupture between the sections, he came north with his family. To Mr. and Mrs. Hill four daughters have been born: Alice L., April 5, 1863 ; Anna E., November 8, 1866 ; Mary V., June 3, 1870; Mattie T., October 8, 1873. One of the ablest and best known judges of the State furnishes this characterization :  "While to the people of the State at large he is known as Honorable William D. Hill, to his personal friends and acquaintances of northwestern Ohio he is best known as ‘Bill Hill.’ Few men in the State had better capacity for generating warm personal attachments or making loyal, devoted friends. It would he false flattery to say of him as a lawyer that he is a patient or industrious student of that science. His strength is in his boundless fund of good sense; his acute judgment of men ; the alertness of his almost faultless perception. The following incidents, all of which came within the personal observation of the writer, will best illustrate his characteristics. He was once called to assist in the prosecution of a civil damage case against a wealthy but high tempered and rather pugnacious farmer, who was charged with a vicious assault upon a neighbor with whom he had quarreled, and for whose approach he had waited on the highway on the occasion of the assault, first placing himself in a decidedly belligerent attitude. Three able lawyers were enlisted in his defense. The contest was spirited. Self-defense was the issue. Some questionable testimony gave a show of plausibility to this theory. Hill closed the argument for the plaintiff. He began : Gentlemen of the Jury : When you see an old fighter get out of. his wagon on the highway; take off his coat, vest and collar, roll up his sleeves, tie his suspenders around his waist, and wait with fists doubled for his adversary to walk a quarter of a mile to come up with him, you can just bet your life it is a clear case of self-defense.' The startling sentence left the gifted advocate in possession of the field, and the result was a good round verdict for the plaintiff. 190 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. " The size of Hill's heart may be gauged by the following incident : A prisoner was charged with forgery. His almost heart-broken wife and five ragged children were in court. The evidence was circumstantial. The trial was one of exciting interest. Hill's sympathies were deeply enlisted. His argument to the jury was simply irresistible. A prompt verdict of 'not guilty' resulted. The tearful wife, almost insane with joy and gratitude, called Hill to the railing which inclosed the bar, unfolded a clean white rag, took from it $10 in small change (perhaps the savings of months), and with the promise of more was about to pour it into his hand when, in his blunt way, he said to her : I'll not touch a cent of that money. Take it and buy some clothes for these poor ragged children, and turned away. Major McKinley, now President-elect, once went to Defiance to defend the son of one of his influential neighbors of Stark county against a charge of robbery and larceny. He had the defense well prepared, but did not care, as he said, to tackle a strange jury. His relations with Hill were pleasant. They were colleagues in the National House of Representatives. He applied to Hill to take charge of the case. Of course he accepted the delicate trust, which enlisted his best efforts. During Hill's argument, which was one of the finest he ever made, the prosecuting attorney interrupted him to read some proposition out of a law book. Hill's silencing comment was: Well! Greeley would say of that proposition, it is surely absurd enough to be good law,' and proceeded. The Major was a happy and grateful man when the verdict of not guilty was returned. Upon the trial of an alimony case, Hill had occasion to ask the defendant, .a plain but eccentric and rather irritable man : You have not lived very pleasantly with your wife for a number of years, have you ?' The rather vigorous answer was : That's a lie! Me and my woman has lived together forty year and she never give me a cross word. What do you think of that ?' With characteristic promptness Hill replied : think that either you're an old liar or she's an old fool.' Hill was once dealing with some figures during his argument, when opposing counsel interrupted to say with some spirit : ' Oh, that's mere jugglery of figures. I learned that at school when I was a boy.' Hill retorted : The gentleman's advantages have been superior to mine. I never attended a. jugglery school in my life.' Hill's greatest strength as an advocate is found in the peculiar tact he employs in dealing with his subject from the stand-point of plain men—from the common view of things. No jury or court is ever in doubt as to what Hill means by what he says. He is an absolute stranger to all professional trickery, and his dealings with his clients, as with opposing counsel, are always frank and fair. His scent for fraud and double dealing is keen and infallible, and bad luck to the sycophant or the sham that stands in his way. Perhaps Hill's crowning accomplishment as a lawyer is found in the philosophy, resignation and entire good nature with which he accepts defeat at the hands of court or jury." WILLIAM H. HUBBARD, Defiance. William H. Hubbard, judge of the Court of Common Pleas of the second subdivision of the Third Judicial District, residing at Defiance, is a native of Connecticut. His parents were Edward C.. and Sarah Humphreys Hubbard, both of whom were mainly of English descent, although having some strains of French and Irish blood. The ancestors of our subject settled in Connecticut more than three centuries ago, and there their descendants continued to reside until his parents removed BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 191 to the Western Reserve in Ohio, in 1856. N. Hubbard, the great-grandfather of our subject, was paymaster and quartermaster-general of the Connecticut troops in the Revolutionary' War. Later he was a member of the Western Reserve Land Company, and made frequent visits to the Territory of Ohio in the interest of the company. He was also a maritime merchant whose ships were employed in trade with the West Indies. The ancestors of Judge Hub-bard's mother were also prominent in public affairs and in the war of the Revolution. The sword of her maternal grandfather, still in the possession of our subject, tells of that unequal contest and testifies to the bravery of the wearer, in the inscriptions engraved thereon. Colonel David Humphreys, his mother's paternal great-uncle, served on the staff of General Putnam, and afterwards on that of General Washington ; and, after the latter became President, he acted as major domo of the executive mansion. The warm personal friendship between him and General Washington continued to the death of the latter. Colonel Humphreys was also minister from this country to Spain and Portugal. Both General Hubbard and Colonel Humphreys were original members of the order of the Cincinnati. William H. Hubbard was born at Middletown, Connecticut, April 13, 1850. When he was six years of age his parents removed to Ashtabula, Ohio, where his father continued to reside until his death, in 1893. His mother, brothers and sisters all remain in Ashtabula. His early education was obtained in the common schools, but, from the time he was nine years old until he entered the practical school of life, he was fortunate in being under the private tuition of the Rev. James Bonner, B. D., of Edinburgh University, Scotland ; to whose skillful and loving training he ascribes in a large degree his powers of thought and analytical reasoning, as well as his love of study and of the best literature. He graduated at Eastman's Business College, in 1866, and became an accountant and book-keeper. In 1870 he was book-keeper and assistant paymaster for the contractors who built the Ashtabula & Jamestown Railroad, now part of the Lake Shore system. While employed with these various duties he was devoting his leisure time to the study of law, concluding his studies in the office of Sherman & Hall, Ashtabula. He was examined and admitted to the Bar by the Supreme ourt, at the term of January, 1871. In 1873 he was admitted to the Bar of the United States Courts for the Northern District of Ohio. And later, on motion of ex-Senator Edmunds of Vermont, he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States. He began practice at Ashtabula., and continued there until 1880. In 1881 he located at Napoleon, Ohio, and practiced there until he removed to Defiance, in July, 1885, where he formed a partnership with the Honorable W. D. Hill, then member of Congress from the Sixth District of Ohio, and one of the foremost lawyers of northwestern Ohio. This association continued until 1892, when Mr. Hill removed temporally to Montana. After practicing alone for about a year, Mr. Hubbard took into partnership with him Mr. J. H. Hockman, the firm being styled Hubbard & Hockman. This partnership continued until November, 1896, when it was dissolved by the election of Mr. Hubbard to the Common Pleas judgeship, 192 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. which he now holds, and the simultaneous election of Mr. Hockman to the office of Probate Judge of Defiance county. Judge Hubbard's subdivision comprises the counties of Williams, Defiance and Paulding. As a lawyer, Judge Hubbard has always been regarded as among the very best. He has been eminently successful as a trial lawyer, and is a most excellent advocate, possessing alike the power of making clear-cut statements of the law to the court and great eloquence in the argument of his case to the jury, while never neglecting the facts of his case. A well-known judge responds to our inquiry for information, as follows : " I know William H. Hubbard, of Defiance, well. He practiced before me when I was on the Bench, and I have practiced with and against him, since. He is a man of unusual mental powers and legal ability. He has a wonderful knowledge of legal principles. His first inquiry is always as to what the law ought to be in any given case, and having determined this to his own satisfaction, he rarely fails to produce an abundance of 'authority to demonstrate that such is the law. He is a man of genial manners, a very courtly and courteous gentleman." Judge Hubbard is making a most excellent judge, and the Bar of his district, wherever he has held court, are warm in their expressions of their high opinion of his, ability, integrity, impartiality and fearlessness. In politics Judge Hubbard is a Democrat, but of late years, on account of the exactions of his practice, he °has not taken an active part, beyond responding to some of the calls made on him for speeches in his own vicinity, during the fall campaigns. In his family relations he is most happy. He was married at a very early age, but his first wife lived only a short time. In 1881 he was married to Miss Mary Moore, daughter of Rev. James Moore, D. D., the Episcopal clergyman at Oberlin, Ohio, but since deceased. The reverend doctor was a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and Mrs. Hubbard was born there. They have now three children, two daughters and one son, namely: Lucy Margaret, aged fourteen years; Edward Moore, aged twelve and Clara Nannie, aged ten years. SIDNEY EDGERTON, Akron. Ex-Governor Edgerton has for more than half a century been a resident of the progressive and prosperous city which is still his home. He was born at Cazenovia, Madison county, New York, August 17, 1818, and obliged to take care of himself from the time he wa eight years of age. His father, Amos Edgerton, a gentleman of ability and scholarship, a teacher by profession, had the misfortune to lose his sight some years before death and died when our subject was an infant of six months. His mother, Zervia Graham, a native of Connecticut, a lady of refinement, left without means of supporting her children as she could have desired, removed to Ontario county and lived until he was twenty-eight years old. At the age of eight he went to live with a farmer named Darling, where he remained a year or two and then drifted to other places until he was twelve. From that time until he reached the age of sixteen he attended the district school in BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 193 winter and worked on a farm in summer. He then engaged with his brother, who was a carpenter and joiner, with a view to learning that trade. After a fair trial it became evident that he had no mechanical genius and little skill in handicraft of any kind. He was frankly told by his brother that a boy who thought more of books and papers than he did of tools would never make a good carpenter; and he was advised to give it up. His expenses for one year in the Lima Seminary were paid by his brother, and after that he paid his own expenses by teaching until he had spent four years in this excellent school. Indeed his time was all occupied in study and teaching until he was twenty-four years of age. In the spring of 1844 he located in Akron and taught for a short time in the academy at Tallmadge. Through all the years from childhood he had felt a strong predilection for the law. It was in his mind long before he undertook to learn the carpenter's trade, and sadly interfered with his sawing to a line or making a square mortise. He was present in a justice's court during the trial of a suit at law when a very young boy, and was fascinated by the contention and evident learning of the lawyers. His yearning to become as one of them accounted for his fondness for books and his unskillful handling of carpenter's tools. He had already managed to read some of the text-books in law, and now at the age of twenty-six he entered the. Cincinnati Law School with a fixed purpose, mature enough to know the meaning and the necessity of application ; courageous enough to make any sacrifice required to accomplish his heart's desire. He was the class-mate and companion of Richard A. Harrison of Columbus, an earnest student some years his junior, now one of the ablest lawyers in Ohio, as well as one of the best men. The two were animated by the same lofty ambition and sustained by the same unfaltering purpose. It is not surprising, therefore, that they were the first in a class of seventy-five to receive their certificates of graduation, while fifty of the number failed utterly. Mr. Edgerton began practice at Akron and at various times formed partnerships which covered indefinite periods. His first was with Daniel S. Lee, which continued only one year. His second was with Judge Van R Humphrey and W. H. Upson, which continued, at least with Judge Upson, about eight years. His nephew, Wilbur F. Sanders, the late United States Senator for Montana, then became associated with him in a partnership which continued until he removed to the West. For twelve years he was in partnership with Jacob Kohler, beginning in 1866. He was interested in politics from the time he left the Law School and was ever guided by the convictions of a strong character. He did not hesitate to declare himself a free-soiler and was a member of the convention in 1848 which gave birth to that party. He was also a member of the Pittsburg convention which organized the National Republican party. For fifteen years in the prime of life he held public office. In 1852 and again in 1854 he was elected prosecuting attorney, serving four years. Daring his first term he prosecuted successfully a celebrated murder case—The State of Ohio vs. Parks. The accused was convicted, and secured a new trial. The case was taken to Cuyahoga County on change of venue, where the prisoner was again convicted, sentenced 194 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. and hung. It was the first execution in the county. In 1858, and again in 1860, he was elected to Congress, serving until March 4, 1863, during a most exciting period of the country's history. At the close of his second term he was appointed Chief Justice of the Territory of Idaho, by President Lincoln. Judge Edgerton recounts the incidents of his trip to the far West and his official residence there in a very entertaining style. The journey was made across the plains from the Missouri river with ox teams. The party consisted of the judge's family, W. F. Sanders, late United States senator, Miss Darling and Miss Geer, and five men. The time occupied was three months and a day, and the route lay along the old California trail to South Pass, the Landee Cutoff to Snake river; thence following up the river fifty miles to a ford and thence, after crossing, westward to Bannock, the territorial capital. The hunting was good, so that the emigrants feasted on antelope and prairie chickens. The ladies, however, had some difficulty in making appetizing or even palatable chicken-pie out of a sage hen. Nature and association impart to the fowl a very pronounced flavor of its name, and the seasoning is too high for a "tenderfoot." It was September when the party arrived at Bannock. The Territory of Idaho was then almost interminable, including the whole of Montana, and the journey from one border to the other would have occupied a year. Fortunately for the judge, there were no laws to be construed but " miners' law," and no marshal to execute the orders of the court. Hence no sessions of court were held. The population was composed of miners and saloon keepers, with the customary aggregation of sports and dance hall habitues that flock to a prosperous mining camp, including a small percentage of good people for salt. After spending about four months in the study of geography and political economy, Judge Edgerton made a trip to Washington to secure a division of the Territory, going on horseback to Salt Lake, thence by stage to the Missouri river. He had friends and influential acquaintances among the old members of Congress, and his mission was successful. Montana was carved out of Idaho, leaving an empire whose limits he might explore judicially. On the return trip, when he reached Salt Lake, he first learned that lie was appointed governor of Montana by President Lincoln. He raised the stars and stripes on the executive residence at Bannock—probably the first specimen of his country's flag ever seen in the Territory. The inhabitants sympathized with the Rebellion, and the tough element in various ways manifested its disapproval of the emblem of Union and authority. The governor was firm and the flag continued to wave. The first territorial legislature was held in 1864 and, in the language of the governor, was opposed to him " politically, socially and morally." The proceedings were lively and sometimes the atmosphere was squally ; but the governor exercised his prerogatives freely and' fearlessly, vetoing obnoxious bills and defeating many objectionable schemes. The government continued to operate smoothly until the autumn of 1866, when he came East for the purpose of placing some of his children in school. It was at the time President Johnson was making his notorious "Swing around the Circle," and Governor Edgerton was not oblivious of the fact that the BENCH AND BAR OF' OHIO - 195 President had become a valiant headsman. He therefore tendered his resignation in February, 1867, to save the axman trouble, but it was not accepted until July. He resumed the practice of law in Akron, with a broader vision and a wealth of experience acquired in the West. His prominence at the Bar and in public life has given him employment as counsel in many of the note worthy cases tried in the county. Governor Edgerton is a broad-minded, generous-hearted man. He has always entertained liberal, progressive views, and advocated the policies which in his judgment were for the betterment of the human race. His sentiment and influence have been against oppression and wrong. He has always been an earnest man, with a strong sense of duty and the moral courage sufficient for any occasion. In the calmness of his evening he is gracefully and quietly retiring from the hurly-burly of professional engagements, to enjoy in their fullness the love of his children, the gratitude and respect of. his fellow men. He was married in May, 1849, to Miss Mary Wright. Four sons and five daughters were born of the marriage. One son and all of the daughters are still living: Wright Prescott Edgerton, graduate of the Military Academy at West Point and professor of mathematics in the same; Martha E. Plossman, editor and manager of the " Great Falls Leader" of Montana ; Idaho E. Buckingham, wife of George Buckingham of Akron; Pauline Edgerton, city librarian of Akron; Ione and Nina, at home. His wife died in 1883, but his sunset will be gilded by the love of his kind. WARREN P. NOBLE, Tiffin. Honorable Warren P. Noble is of English descent through the lineage of his father, with a strain of Irish blood transmitted from his maternal grandfather. His father, William Noble, was a native of Connecticut, which had been the place of residence for several generations of his ancestors. He emigrated to Pennsylvania when a young man and settled near Berwick, then in Luzerne, but now in Columbiana county. Here he courted and married Miss Rebecca Lytle, a native of that place, whose ancestors on her mother's side had resided there for several generations, and whose father, Thomas Lytle, was a native of Ireland. The subject of this biography was one of the ten children of William and Rebecca (Lytle) Noble. He was born near the said town of Berwick, June 14, 1820. The stock from which he sprang was eminently brave and patriotic—the stuff out of which enterprising pioneers are made. His maternal grandmother was one of the sufferers, and barely escaped being a victim of the Wyoming massacre in 1778, saving herself and family from the fury of the savages by fleeing to a stockhouse. His father was a volunteer for the War of 1812, but hostilities soon after ceased and he never was sent to the front, but continued for years after the close of the war one of the Connecticut settlers of the Wyoming valley in Pennsylvania. The family afterwards moved to Ohio when Warren P. was an infant, locating for a time in Wayne county ; going thence to Medina and finally settling in Seneca for a permanent residence. William Noble 196 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO learned the trade of a millwright, and was engaged in building mills both in Pennsylvania and Ohio for many years. He lived to a good old age and employed his time usefully, dying at his home near Fostoria, Ohio, in 1864, aged eighty-one years. The companion of his youth died in 1872, at the age of seventy-one years. Warren P. Noble attended the public schools of Wayne, Medina and Seneca counties until eighteen years old. He then entered the Wadsworth Academy, which was under the supervision of John McGregor, one of the ablest educators of the time in Ohio—a man who so impressed the minds and hearts of his pupils that forty years after his death they perpetuated his memory by a marble statue, chiseled in Italy and reared and unveiled at Wadsworth, Ohio. He remained in this school two years, and supported himself by teaching in the public schools during the winter months. Among the most pleasurable recollections of his early life is the school at Fostoria, of which he was the principal in 1840 and 1841. Several of the boys under his instruction in that school have since become men of great prominence in the professions and in politics. Among the latter it is proper to mention Honorable Charles Foster, congressman, governor and secretary of the treasury. From his youth Mr. Noble was a lover of books and applied himself with persistent diligence to reading and study. He was a thoughtful, careful, discriminating reader, determined to appropriate and assimilate all that he read. While engaged in teaching he took up the study of law and pursued it with a purpose and persistency which may always be relied on to win. He set about it with all the vigor of his intellect, gaining a considerable insight into the principles before abandoning that stepping-stone profession which furnished the expense money for such period as might be necessary to occupy entirely with the work of preparation, before he could secure any revenue from his life profession. In February, 1842, he removed to Tiffin and continued his study of the law in the office of Rawson & Pennington, where the late General William H. Gibson, of the silver tongue, was his fellow-student. He was admitted to the Bar July 4, 1843, and at once entered upon a practice which has been continuous save for the interruption of public service. In 1846, as soon as he reached the eligible age, prescribed in the Constitution, he was elected to the State legislature. Two years later he was re-elected, serving two terms. In 1851 he was elected prosecuting attorney; but resigned the office after serving three years. A few years after the opening of his practice, he formed a partnership with his brother, the late Judge Harrison Noble, who had studied with him, which was continued about a quarter of a century. They then took into the firm as a partner Nelson B. Lutes, one of their students, and continued the practice under the firm name of " Noble Brothers & Lutes," for a couple of years ; when, by mutual agreement, this firm was divided, leaving the subject of this sketch to pursue the practice alone. Afterwards, about the year 1876, he formed another partnership with Perry Adams, a very bright and promising young lawyer, who had been a student in his office. And this association was dissolved only by the death of Mr. Adams, whilst serving as president pro tem. of the Ohio State Senate, in 1891. BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 197 On the death of Mr. Adams he formed another partnership with his son, Warren F. Noble, and Guilford B. Keppel, under the firm name of Noble, Keppel & Noble, with the understanding that as soon as the business on hand was closed up, Mr. Noble would retire. This partnership is still nominally continued, but to use his own phrase, Mr. Noble is " endeavoring to slide out." These are the only partnerships entered into by Mr. Noble during his long career at the Bar. In 1860 he was elected to Congress on the Democratic ticket, and his service in that body during the critical period of the Nation's history was alike honorable to himself and satisfactory to his constituents. He was a War Democrat, supporting with heartiness and vigor the measures adopted for the enforcement of law and the suppression of rebellion. The restoration of the Union was placed above temporary expedients and every other consideration. On that proposition he supported the administration of Abraham Lincoln as sincerely as if the government had been administered, and the laws executed, by a member of his own party. He recognized the broad distinction between patriots and the enemies of the Nation, and allied himself with all who placed patriotism above partisanship, and recognized no other political allegiance in the discharge of his official duties during the time of greatest peril. His course was approved by the Union soldiers and a large majority of the electors of his district, so that he was re-elected in 1862, in spite of the fact that the State had been considerably gerrymandered in the meantime, by which Republican counties had been annexed to his district and Democratic counties cut off. His majority in the second race was twelve hundred. his constant efforts in behalf of the soldiers and regard for their interests commended him to their suffrage. His service in Congress covered almost the whole period of the Civil War, as it began March 4, 1861, a month before the firing upon Sumter, and ended March 4, 1865, little more than a month before the surrender of Lee. Among the intellectual giants in the House of Representatives were James G. Blaine, Roscoe Conkling, George H. Pendleton, William Windom, James A. Garfield and Thaddeus Stevens, with the latter of whom he served on a committee for four years, in the meantime securing and retaining Mr. Stevens's warm friendship. The issue of war tested the strength of the government and the principles of men, and the man who exhibited in his public acts the breadth of statesmanship rather than the narrowness of partisanism was prepared to render an account of his stewardship to his constituents without a shameful blush or plague of conscience. Mr. Noble retired from Congress with an excellent reputation and resumed the practice of the law, which has occupied his time and in which he has been successful by virtue of application and persistent determination. Much of the important litigation in the courts of his circuit has been directed by his painstaking care. Many of the decisions of the Appellate Courts bear the impress of his patient investigation and logical argument. He has arrived at an estate when it is possible to take otium cum dignitate. He has invested some of his accumulations in public enterprises, and has united himself with certain orders that teach and practice benevolence. In Masonry he is a Knight Templar, and he is also an 198 - BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO. Independent Odd Fellow. During his professional career, Mr. Noble has also served in many positions of trust and confidence. He was one of the directors of the Tiffin, Toledo & Eastern Railroad from its organization until this branch was completed and turned over to the Pennsylvania system. He was a member of the board of trustees of the Ohio State University for about ten years next after that board was first organized, and took an active part in all its business affairs—having been elected president of that board, at least twice, whilst a majority of the board were Republican in politics. He has served on the board of education of his own city for more than twenty years. And for about fifteen years he was president of the Commercial Bank of Tiffin, and is still its vice-president. He has been the preceptor of many young men now successfully practicing in different parts of the country, and about one-half of the most active and successful lawyers now in his own city have received their legal education in his office—two of whom have received judicial honors. And the first lady lawyer ever admitted to the Bar in Ohio read under his tuition and received her certificate for examination at his hands, namely, Mrs. Nettie C. Lutes, now the wife of Nelson B. Lutes, another of his students ; and who, by the way, is now one of the most able and successful lawyers in northwestern Ohio, though laboring for many years under a difficulty that would seem to most men insurmountable. He is and has been for the greatest part of his professional life so completely deaf as to be unable to hear the articulation of his own voice, or to even hear the loudest thunder; yet by the aid of his ambitious wife, who for that purpose, with him, studied the art of communicating by the motions of the mouth and lips, so that she could sit by and hear the questions put to a witness and the answers given, and by this art readily communicate to him all such questions, answers, and, in fact, everything else necessary for him to know, he was enabled to properly conduct his case. Whilst all this requires great patience and perseverance as well as hard labor on the part of both Mr. and Mrs. Lutes, yet one who has never seen it would be astonished to see with what facility it is accomplished by these two persons. The remarkable success of these parties, under the circumstances, deserves a more extended notice than it is proper to insert here. A prominent lawyer, than whom no one now living knows the subject better, writes of Mr. Noble as follows : " When I first knew Mr. Noble, he had, perhaps, already reached the zenith of his power as a lawyer, and now after twenty-seven years of the closest professional and social relations with him, I feel as well qualified to speak of his qualities—the man, the citizen, and the lawyer—as any man now living. In presence, he is one of God's masterpieces ; calm, dignified and majestic, he moves among his fellow-lawyers of the Bar, his fellow-men in the different walks of life, with an ease and dignity, a conscious superiority of demeanor, never intrusive, but always pleasant, that commands the respectful admiration of every one. As a citizen and public servant occupying positions of the highest honor and trust, his life has been irreproachable ; as a friend, he is incomparable. But as a lawyer I have known him best. He may well be styled a self-made man. We first meet Warren P. Noble entirely self-dependent and unaided, at a time BENCH AND BAR OF OHIO - 199 in our history when opportunities for education and advancement were very limited, and almost unattainable to the young Oman unaided by wealth or influential friends, but nothing daunted, we see him, a young man of eighteen summers, entering upon this grand study of his life's work with an earnest determination, an untiring industry, an unconquerable zeal and energy, joined to unlimited patience, for well did he realize that the treasures of wisdom are not to be seized with a violent hand, but to be earned by persevering labor.' Nurtured by such qualities as these found in the boy-student, lay in embryo the future of one of the foremost figures of the Ohio Bar ; a man of comprehensive intellect, broad views and sound judgment, to all of which is united a conservative nature which is ever guarding against any radical movement, fully recognizing that to command any subject adequately we must stand above it,' and not be carried away with it, thus keeping the master hand on the rudder. Such was Warren P. Noble when I first met him, and such are the qualities of the man to-day. The habits of his professional life, like those of his student life, have been of unceasing industry and unconquerable energy. His method of preparing his cases was always most thorough, and is undoubtedly one of the chief causes of his remarkable success. As has been said of Rufus Choate, he was never content until everything which might by any possibility bear upon the case, had been carefully investigated, and this investigation brought down to the last moment before trial, and his briefs, always full and comprehensive, could never be said to be finished until the question in controversy had been settled by the judgment of the court ; and if not settled to his satisfaction in the trial court, by the judgment of the court of last resort. Thus equipped, he enters upon the trial of his cases with a conscious power, which, united with his magnificent presence and dignified courtesy, makes him an antagonist of great force to meet and combat, step by step, every seeming vantage ground of his opponent, and the diligence of his research and preparation is always very apparent as the trial progresses. Fully understanding his case and knowing the points upon which it must turn for or against him, he is never off his guard, while assailing the weakest points of his adversary's case with the force of a battering ram, with all of his forces, of evidence and argument, marshaled with such skill as to be delivered with most telling effect, to convince the court and jury that he is entitled to the verdict or judgment for which he contends. Mr. Noble's argument is of the sledge-hammer style. In this respect he resembles the late Allen G. Thurman in a marked degree. Employing none of the arts and tricks of oratory, he is eloquent in the clearness of his statement, the broad common sense of his reasoning, the force of his logic and the earnestness and power of his utterance, and his argument always commands the most respectful attention, and carries with it a depth and weight of most convincing power. And now, after more than fifty years of active practice, we see in Mr. Noble's life an inspiration and noble example for the young members of the Bar; his life has been one of great demand and activity, honored among men in a remarkable degree, and he will take his place in the history of the Ohio Bar, which has furnished so many legal giants, as one of the foremost lawyers of the State, of whom her Bench and Bar may justly be proud."