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CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE MANSFIELD BAR.

THE FIRST COURTS OF THE COUNTY-THE FIRST GRAND JURY - THE EARLY LAWYERS OF MANSFIELD - THE VISITING LAWYERS - THE PRESIDENT JUDGES - GEN. MCLAUGHLIN-GEN. ROBERT BENTLEY-THOMAS H. FORD - MORDECAI BARTLEY-JUDGE BRINKERHOFF - L. B. MATSON-MILTON W. WORDEN - GEN. BRINKERHOFF'S REVIEW OF THE MANSFIELD BAR.

UPON the organization of Richland County in 1813, the Associate Judges were Thomas Coulter, William Gass and Peter Kinney. They held a special session in June of that year, the only business coming before them being the appointment of Jonathan Coulter and Rebecca Byrd as administrators of the estate of Levi Jones, who had been killed by the Indians. Winn Winship, George Coffinberry and Rolin Weldon were appointed appraisers of Jones property.

On the 9th of September of the same year, these Judges again organized a court, and remained in session two days. The last will and testament of Jacob Newman, deceased, was presented. proved and ordered to be recorded. Andrew Coffinherry and James McCluer were appointed and qualified executors, giving bond in the sum of $10,000.

Ruth and Abraham Trucks, wife and son of Nicholas Trucks, deceased; were appointed administrators.

The next day, September 10, the court ordered the Treasurer to pay Samuel McCluer $12.25 for seven days service as Commissioner and Melzar Tannehill $9.25 for five days service as Commissioner; also. Samuel Watson, $14. for eight days' work in the same office. The court also appointed Winn Winship, Clerk; Andrew Coffinberry. Recorder, and William Biddle, Surveyor.

The Court of Common Pleas, prior to the Constitution of 1851, was composed of one President Judge and two Associates. The President Judge must needs be a lawyer, but the others were not necessarily such, and generally were not. The Associates sat on the bench with the President, but were not expected to know much of law. They discharged the duties of the present Probate Judge, and in all other respects were ornamental rather than useful.

The first court of this character, regularly organized for business, convened January 14, 1814 ; President Judge, William Wilson; Associates, Peter Kinney, Thomas Coulter and James McCluer. The grand jury at this time, and the first one in the county, was composed of Isaac Pearce, foreman ; George Coffinberry, Chusthy Brubaker, Thomas Lofland, Samuel Hill, Amariah Watson, George Crawford, Hugh Cunningham, Melzar Tannehill, Ebenezer Rice, William Slater, William Biddle, Solomon Lee and Rolin Weldon.

The first day's proceedings of this court included the granting of licenses to Royal N. Powers to retail merchandise ; to James McCluer, to keep a house of public entertainment; to Asa Murphy, to keep a tavern at his dwelling (site of the Wiler House) ; to Johnson McCarty, for four months, to retail merchandise, and to George Coffinberry, to keep a public house.

Rules were adopted for the government of the court, and on the 14th it adjourned.

Thus was put in motion the first legal machinery in Richland County, and that machinery,

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with many repairs and additions, is yet grinding out justice: it is hoped and believed, to rich and poor alike.

This court met in the upper part of the old block-house, on the square and when it convened there was no resident lawyer in Mansfield. The courts were "on wheels" in those days, the custom being for the court to travel from place w place. the lawyers accompanying it. It was not until 1815, that John M. May, the first lawyer took up his residence in Mansfield. From that time forward, the place never wanted for lawyers. and many of then have been men of more than ordinary ability. and have been honored with high positions in the State and ration.

The second lawyer was Asa Grimes; father of A. L. Grimes of Mansfield, who died of consumption shortly after his arrival.

In 1816, Col. William W. Cotgrave and Wilson Elliott came. and these were followed in a few years by James Purely, Jacob Parker and James Stewart. Of these first lawyers, James Purdy is yet living in Mansfield. Although eighty-six, he occasionally appears upon the street, and his step is slow and apparently painful, on account of a sciatic affliction of long standing; yet his eye is bright, and his manner and conversation give evidence that his heart is Yet young.

Most people in Mansfield can yet remember John M. May- "Father May," as he was familiarly known among his intimate friends. He walked across the Alleghany Mountains, seeking his fortune in the "Far West," stumbled upon this little frontier town in the woods, and remained here fifty-four years. He was a good citizen and an honest man. What more need be said of any man ? How short that sentence is ; yet what years of struggle must precede it, if it be truthfully uttered.

Judge Parker and Mr. May had been law students together in the office of Philemon Beecher, at Lancaster, Ohio. Parker was a good man, a sound lawyer and a conscientious Judge. Judge Brinkerhoff says of him: "He was one of the best case lawyers' I ever knew. The reading of adjudged cases was one of the luxuries of his life, and his memory of cases or points ruled by or discussed in them was wonderful. But he was not a reader of law reports only. Like James Stewart, who succeeded to the Common Pleas bench, under the Constitution of 1851, he was an omnivorous reader. Both of these gentlemen aspired to and attained a liberal general scholarship, and would have been ashamed to be thought lawyers simply, and nothing more."

Packer had graduated at the Ohio University, at Athens, he and Thomas Ewing being the first to receive the degree of Bachelor of Arts from on Ohio college. He was not made a Judge until 1840, and then brought to his duties a mind well matured and stored, not only with law but with general literature. As a Judge, he was peculiarly successful, rod would have done honor to the highest judicial position.

James Stewart studied law in the office of Judge Parker, and was admitted to the bar about the year 1828. Stewart was a Scotch Irish boy, from Western Pennsylvania, and came West to grow up with the country. Like many, another fatuous lawyer and man, he taught school while getting his legal learning; and was among the first and best teachers in Mansfield.

When Judge Parker's term on the bench expired, in 1850, Stewart, by unanimous recommendation of his associates, was elevated to his place. Physically and mentally, he was a very strong man.

A few words spoken by Judge George W. Geddes, who was presiding at the time Mr. Stewart's death was announced, deserve preservation. He says: "In years, be fell far short of man's appointed time; but reckoning time

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by the better rule, may I not say, he lived out the full measure of his years? For we should remember that -

"' We live in deeds. not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs.

He most lives, Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."'

The first law student in Mansfield was Andrew Coffinberry, who studied. with Mr. May. He was quite an important young man in the young city, making acquaintances easily and rapidly, and becoming rather popular among the backwoodsmen of that day. He was also one of the first school teachers. and generally went by the name of Count Coffinberry. When he became a full-fledged lawyer, he was, one day for some eccentricity, called by Judge Osborne. " Count Puffendorf," which name afterward clung to him for some years.

Among the lawyers who traveled with the court in those days, and visited Mansfield frequently. were William Stanberry, of Newark, who died in January, 1873, at the ripe age of eighty-five; Hosmer Curtis and Samuel Mott, of Mount Vernon; Alexander Harper and Elijah Mirwine. of Zanesville, and Charles T. Sherman, of Lancaster. Hosmer Curtis was the first Prosecuting_ Attorney. and was succeeded by Mr. May in 1816. Mr. May was succeeded by William B. Raymond. of Wooster.

The Judges then held their office seven ,years, and the successive President Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, up to the formation of the constitution in 1831, were William Wilson, of Licking: George Tod (father of the late Gov. Tod). of Trumbull ; Harper. of Muskingum: Lane and Higgins. of Huron. and Ezra Dean, of Wayne, the last of whom had been a lieutenant in the United States army, and had fought at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane.

One of the early lawyers in Mansfield was Gen. William McLaughlin, a large-hearted Irishman, who came about the year 1827, from Canton. He is well remembered as a soldier and a patriot. He was generous and brave to a fault; a man of great energy and activity ; making hosts of friends, laying down his life finally for his flag, in the war of the rebellion.

When McLaughlin first arrived in Mansfield,, hunting was quite an occupation among many of the pioneers, and, having a good deal of confidence in his powers, in whatever way he chose to exercise them, he desired to have it generally understood that he was a great hunter, though it does not appear that his exploits in that direction were marvelous. One day, after a tramp in the woods, he walked proudly into the village, with what he supposed was a wild turkey slung over his shoulder. Thomas B. Andrews was working on the roof of the first brick court house at the time, and he says McLaughlin swung his hat and cheered, holding up to view the trophy of his prowess as a hunter. Upon examination, however, the turkey turned out to be a turkey buzzard. The General was, at first, somewhat indignant at this verdict by his friends, protesting that it was a wild turkey, that his friends were blockheads, who did not know a turkey from a buzzard, and that he proposed having roast turkey for dinner.

Finally becoming convinced of his error, he laughed as heartily as any, and concluded the cheapest way out of the scrape was to "set up the camphene" for the crowd.

He raised a company and served honorably through the Mexican war; and when the war of the rebellion broke out, he offered the first full company to the Governor of the State for three months' service. He afterward went into the three-years service, but being somewhat advanced in years, could not withstand the fatigues and exposures of a soldier's life. Dying in camp" with the harness on," he was brought home and buried with the honors of

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war. Scott's beautiful verse seems appropriate here.

"Soldier, rest: thy warfare o'er,

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking.

Dream of battle-fields no more,

Days of danger, nights of waking."

Among the early Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas no one, perhaps was better known or more highly appreciated than Gen. Robert Bentley. He came to Richland County in 1815, from Western Pennsylvania, and was appointed Judge in 1821. At the expiration of his term of office, in 1828, he was elected to the State Senate. He was a man of military tastes, also: was in the war of 1812, and subsequently filled every position in the Ohio militia, from Ensign up to Major General. During his whole life, he was a prominent, influential and worthy citizen.

Among all these members of the Mansfield bar. who have gone to the " shadow land," what figure stands out more prominently in the mind's eye than that of the genial, large-hearted, large brained " Tom" Ford ? He, too, was a veteran soldier, serving in two wars. Gen. Brinkerhoff thus writes of him: "Gov. Ford was a man cast in nature's largest mold; a man of imposing personal presence, and possessed of great natural gifts as a orator. Some of his efforts upon the stump have rarely, if ever, been excelled. His speech at the Know Nothing Convention, in Philadelphia, gave him a national reputation. As a specimen of crushing repartee; nothing in the English language excels it. Pitt, in his palmiest days, never made more brilliant points in the same space than did Gov. Ford in that speech. It was an occasion that called out, fully, his peculiar powers. None knew him intimately who did not become attached to him. He had faults, but they were faults of the head and not of the heart.

After the war, he drifted to Washington City, where he practiced law until his death, in 1868. For several years before his death, he was an earnest worker in the temperance cause. and a member of the Methodist Church.

Mordecai Bartley occupies a prominent place in the history of Mansfield, as a citizen, a lawyer, and a man. He was a Captain in the war of 1812; was elected to the State Senate in 1817, and was afterward Register of the Virginia military school lands. He was sent to Congress in 1823, serving in that body four terms, and declining a re-election. In 1844, he engaged in mercantile and agricultural pursuits; and was elected Governor of the State on the Whig ticket. Declining a renomination for Governor, he spent the evening of his days in the labors of his profession and his farm.

In later years. Judge Jacob Brinkerhoff and John Sherman, members of the :Mansfield bar, became prominent in the State and nation. The former was for many years, one of Ohio's Supreme Judges. He was elected to Congress by the Democratic party, in 1843 and rendered himself famous as the author of the Wilmot Proviso. The Judge is yet living, though in very feeble health.

Later still, L. B. Matson and Milton W. Worden came upon the stage of action, performing well their parts, and passing away, while yet in the prime of life. Matson, at the time of his death, as a trial lawyer, stood at the head of his profession, and had the largest practice of any lawyer in the city. Perhaps nothing could better indicate the public estimate of Judge Worden than the following extract from the remarks of Henry C. Hedges, in his announcement of Judge Worden's death to the court, Judge Osborne presiding: "By the voice of my brethren at the bar, a sad, solemn duty is mine. Since the last adjournment of this court, death has been with us, and a member of this bar, one well known, highly respected and much loved by us all, has been summoned from the labors of time to the realities of eternity. Death, during the years I

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have been at the bar, has been no infrequent visitor. A Mitchell, young in years, to whom the doors of the temple of justice were only opened, not having been permitted to cross its threshold ; a Parker, far advanced in age, with a mind well stored with all the learning of the law ; a Stewart, of most majestic face and form, while in the perfected fullness of his intellectual powers; a McLaughlin, with head all silvered with age, but with a heart all ablaze with patriotic fire, unmindful of ease, giving his last days, as he did the earlier years of his life, to his country and her flag; a Johnston, in middle life, scholarly, eloquent, with an Irishman's keen wit, but an Irishman's warm heart; and a' Ford, of grand stature, of great physical strength, with intellectual endowments, if aroused, equal to any emergency, but for the most time inactive and useless, because not used. All these we have known ; we have for a time gone in and out with them, and then they were not; and now, again, has this bar been convened to pay the last sad tribute of love and respect to one of its members-:Milton W. Worden." Judge Worden was but twenty-nine years of age, but a man of brilliant promise, though undeveloped as a lawyer. He went into the army, and lost a leg at Harper's Ferry. Returning home, he was elected Probate Judge, and was subsequently appointed Internal Revenue Assessor, which office he held at the time of his death. He was followed to the grave by the Odd Fellows' societies and Young Men's Christian Association, of which he was a member, and a large concourse of citizens.

As an estimate of the earlier Mansfield bar, nothing could be better, perhaps, than the following from the pen of Gen. Brinkerhoff, who knew all these men in their prime "When I was a student at law, in 1850 and 1851, the giants of the Mansfield bar were Jacob Parker, James Stewart, Thomas W. Bartley, Jacob Brinkerhoff and Samuel J. Kirkwood. Gen. McLaughlin and John M. May had passed their zenith. James Purdy had become a banker. Charles T. Sherman was at his best. He did a collecting business, but rarely appeared in the courts as a trial lawyer. John Sherman had promise, but no large fulfillment as yet. So, also, Col. Burns and Col. Isaac Gass.

"Thomas H. Ford was at his best, and was a man of great natural powers, but was indolent and careless and. did not make the mark he might have made at the bar. Judge Geddes was the partner of Judge Brinkerhoff, and was a young man of ability, which rapidly developed and subsequently made him an able lawyer and one of the best balanced common-pleas judges in the State.

"Henry P. Davis, Manuel May, Robert C. Smith and several others had their shingles out, but were not famous as yet. I knew them all very well.

"Parker, Stewart and Bartley were specially friendly, to me, and I appreciated it. I have always retained a warm remembrance of all of them. I was a student with Brinkerhoff & Geddes.

"Judge Stewart was the reverse of Judge Parker in his mental make-up. The latter was preeminently a book lawyer, and could give from memory volume and page for every decision of any special consequence in the Ohio Reports, and, probably, could refer off-hand to more legal precedents than any man in the State. He read the dryest law reports with all the zest of a school-girl with her first novel. It was all meat and drink to him.

"Judge Stewart, on the contrary, cared but little for the Reports, and consulted them to fortify his own judgment rather than to guide it. He was a born jurist, and his instincts of right and wrong were so keenly accurate that he rarely went astray. His decisions were very rarely questioned, and still more rarely set aside by a superior court; in short, he was by common consent the model Judge of his time,

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and, probably, has never had his superior in this circuit.

"Off the bench, in the practice of the profession, Judge Parker and Judge Stewart were still more opposite in their characteristics. Parker was essentially an office lawyer. and a very superior one, but had no special ability before a jury. He stammered in his utterance, and had none of the gifts of oratory.

"Judge Stewart, on the other hand, was a mighty man before a jury. The sweep and power of his eloquence was overwhelming, and carried everything before it. His large, portly and commanding presence was of itself sufficient to hold the attention of the jury, but, in addition, he had all the best qualities of a great jury lawyer.

"His physical endurance seemed inexhaustible, and he was apparently as fresh at the end of a trial as at the beginning. As a jury lawyer, Judge Stewart has never been surpassed at the Mansfield bar.

"Next to Parker and Stewart in age, and fully their peers in mental ability, came Thomas W. Bartley and Jacob Brinkerhoff. They were rivals, and always pitted against each other. Bartley was the most persistent man among them. He was not as fine an orator as either Stewart or Brinkerhoff, nor as well read as Parker, but he had the tenacity of a bull-dog, and an industry that was endless and tireless. These qualities made him a very dangerous antagonist. He deservedly stood in the front rank of Ohio lawyers.

"Judge Brinkerhoff. Bartley's most frequent antagonist, was the most brilliant man of this whole legal galaxy, and the most attractive speaker. At repartee, he was as quick, sharp, and bright as lightning, but he lacked the tenacity of Bartley and the ponderous weight of Stewart. Juries were delighted with Brinkerhoff and detested Bartley ; the former was brief, brilliant and beautiful; the latter, dry, tedious and harsh. Brinkerhoff rarely spoke over an hour; Bartley rarely spoke less than three hours; and sometimes, as in the Welch murder trial, lie held on three days. The result was they were very evenly matched. If either predominated in the crucible of success it was Bartley's pertinacity. In fact, Bartley could never be considered vanquished until the verdict was returned, judgment entered, execution issued and returned satisfied.

"Brinkerhoff was a man of more general culture, perhaps, than any of his competitors, as he read every thing and remembered everything. Perhaps it does not become me as his kinsman to say it, yet I think the general judgment of his contemporaries will bear me out in saying that he was, in all respects, a model lawyer and a model man. He was brilliant, scholarly and thoroughly honest.

"A little incident I remember is a fair index of his whole life. When I was a student in his office, he was politically under a cloud. He was a Free-Soil Democrat, and for this was tabooed by his party and despised by the Whigs. I was riding with him one day, and suggested the propriety of supporting his party in all that was good, leaving the slavery question for a more propitious period in the future. His reply was, 'I cannot play Hamlet with Hamlet left out. I am a Democrat, but it seems to me that opposition to slavery is the heart of Democracy. I know I am down politically, and probably I shall always remain down, but the time will come when my children, or my grandchildren, will remember me with more I honor on that account than for anything else in my history.' '

"Samuel J. Kirkwood was just coming into prominence, and gave great promise; but he took a notion to go to Iowa in 1855, and did not, therefore, rise to his true eminence at the Mansfield bar. The fact that he has since been twice Governor, and is now in the United States Senate, is a sufficient indication of the metal he is made of.

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" The decade from 1845 to 1855 was the golden age of the Mansfield bar, and a more brilliant galaxy of lawyers, probably, was never congregated in a single city in Ohio. We of a later generation can hardly hope to attain to the stature of these giants of our pioneer times.

"Doubtless we have good lawyers now, and, in special departments, better lawyers; but as general practitioners, our predecessors, who grew up in pioneer times, were larger men as a whole.

"Such lawyers as Thomas Ewing, Sr., old Peter Hitchcock and Edwin M. Stanton were the products of pioneer soil, and such men do not seem to grow in this day and generation."