USA > California > Amador County > History of Amador County, California, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 65
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GRANGERS.
Some years since several of these societics were organized in the county. The first was in the vicin-
* Deceased.
John Vogan
H. Goldner
Greenhalgh, Thos.
Schwartz, E.
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SKETCHES OF AMADOR COUNTY BAR.
ity of the Jackson valley school-house. The objects seemed to have been to protect themselves against the extortions of middle men, by combining to dis- pose of their produce directly to the consumers. The attempt was not quite successful, owing to the inexperience or incapacity of their agents. It was attempted to engraft them on the political parties, but the Grangers declined any alliance. It is likely, however, that both parties, seeking their votes, con- ceded legislation that would not have been given to unorganized sentiment. The influence of the grange is much less now than a few years since. There are still two or three societies in the county. It is probable that social enjoyment rather than financial benefits, is the motive power. The officers are divided between males and females, the latter being elected to offices such as Ceres, Pomona and Flora. A society of this kind meets once a month at Sutter Creek, occasionally holding a feast or day of general recreation. No statistics are at hand.
CHAPTER XLIII.
SKETCHES OF AMADOR COUNTY BAR. BY J. G. SEVERANCE, SAN FRANCISCO.
AT a very early period in the history of California, subsequent to its acquisition by the United States, the Bar of "Old Calaveras" was justly assigned a position in the front rank of the legal profession. It was, with few exceptions, composed of inen of push and genius; of acknowledged worth, integrity, ability, and wit; men possessed of learning and culture, acquired in the best of Eastern schools, and of large experience, gained by near association and contact with the ablest lawyers, jurists, and scholars of the commercial and manufacturing cities, and populous agricultural and mineral districts of the Atlantic States. That air of rusticity, and the lim- ited professional experience which usually charac- terize members of the profession in the interior of older settled sections, were wanting among these cosmopolitan argonauts. They were alike experi- enced in, and qualified to skillfully deal with, intri- cate questions of maritime, commercial, and inter- national law, as settled and adjudicated by author- ity, and to cope with and adjust successfully such novel legal problems as the new industries, customs, and requirements of the newly acquired territory developed; they came prepared for city or country life, for metropolitan, bucolic or pioneer practice. They abandoned the homes of education and refine- ment in the East, for the rude life of the Western El Dorado, in search of the Golden Fleece, and, if funds ran low because of the too angelic visits of clients, instead of listlessly awaiting the coming of a brief in their offices, they sought and found lucra- tive employment on ranches, in work-shops, kitchens, mining claims, and other vocations, until a popular recognition of their talents gave abundant labor in
their profession. Many a retainer of corpulent pro- portions has been dropped into hands made hard and horny by familiarity with rough labor, or soft- ened by culinary employment, and the grease of the dish-pan; and the intricate details of many cases of great financial importance have been imparted to counsel while engaged with pick and shovel at the sluices and the long-tom.
Ably and well has the Bar of "Old Calaveras" been represented in both the Senate and House of Representatives of the national Congress, and in both Houses of the State Legislature, by not a few of its members; many, to its honor and credit, have worn the judicial ermine. It has furnished gov- ernors, and numerous faithful and competent officials for political positions, Federal, State, and municipal, and none have been found unworthy of the trust reposed in them. When, by the Act of the State Legislature of 1854, the little county of Amador was created out of a portion of Calaveras county, the former retained a fair and just proportion of the legal talent which had been embraced within the latter. A jealous, but friendly, rivalry was engen- dered between the denizens of the two sections lying on either side of the deep gorge through which flowed the Mokelumne river, and which seemed to have been designed by Nature for a political boun- dary line; and frequent contentions arose, in which the opposing clans acknowledged the leadership of the lawyers of their respective divisions. So equally matched were these generals in diplomacy and skill, that a segregation was acquiesced in, as the only method of adjustment, and Amador county was created, that each faction might have full scope for the exercise of its genius. A close intimacy and the kindliest feeling subsequently existed between the two Bars, which have at all times been so closely allied that great difficulty is experienced in record- ing the history of the one, without including that of the other.
The more important of the early litigation in Amador county was concerning matters affecting the respective and relative rights of the miner, the riparian claimant and the agriculturist, up to about the year 1866, when the Supreme Court decided that the interest of a miner in his claim was realty, hence questions affecting such interest were not within the jurisdiction of inferior courts. All cases involving the possession of mining claims, their boundaries and priviliges were tried in Justices' Courts, irrespective of their values, subject to an appeal to the County Court. Consequently large fees were frequently paid to attorneys for conducting trials in these courts where the interests involved often amounted to thousands of dollars. The waters of the rivers and creeks were appropriated and conveyed in ditches and flumes to the mines by the construction of dams and tapping them at different points, and it fre- quently became a delicate matter to properly and equitably adjust the rights of adverse claimants. It
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often occurred that beneath the most productive soil, forming the surface of a flat or bar, the bed rock was richest in its deposits of gold. Hence many questions arose without well-established precedents, and legislative as well as judicial skill was frequently invoked to settle them in such manner as the better to subserve the public welfare and the individual interests of each. Senator Norman, of Calaveras county, introduced a bill, which was known as the Norman Bill, in the Legislature, which became a law in the year 1857, and which, in a great measure, served to reconcile disputes concerning the relative rights of the miner and agriculturist; and the final adjudication of many other litigious propositions arising in the courts of Amador, of a novel charac- ter, have largely contributed to the settlement of vexed questions, and rendered certain what was before uncertain.
Following are the names of those who, as judges and lawyers, have taken an active part in the judi- cial affairs of the county since its organization: Marion W. Gordan, W. W. Cope, Robert M. Briggs, James F. Hubbard, S. J. K. Handy, James T. Farley, James W. Porter, A. C. Brown, Samuel B. Axtell, Thomas D. Grant, T. M. Pawling, H. A. Carter, John C. Gear, Charles Boynton, Judge Reynolds, J. G. Severance, George W. Seaton, John W. Armstrong, James H. Hardy, Alvinza Hayward, John Palmer, W. P. Buchanan, Alonzo Platt, W. T. Curtis, Claiborn Roarer, Henry L. Waldo, Nash C. Briggs, John A. Eagon, Wm. P. George, Fayette Macc, T. J. Phelps, A. Caminetti, Silas Penry, George Moore, P. C. Johnson, L. N. Ketchum, J. Foot Turner, J. A. Robinson, Henry Cook, Moses Tebbs, George L. Gale.
Amador county was first included within the fifth judicial district, of which Hon. Charles M. Creanor, now of Stockton, was the Judge. This district was comprised of the populous and important mining and agricultural counties of Amador, Calaveras, Tuolumne, Stanislaus and San Joaquin, and, to dis- pose of the enormous amount of litigation arising therein, required great energy, endurance, and dis- patch. Court week at Jackson was an eventful season. Motions and demurrers for delay received but little consideration, and not to be ready when your case was called was to have it very summarily disposed of. Jurors, witnesses, and litigants, from all parts of the county, were largely in attendance, and one case followed another from nine in the morning until far into the night, when, not infre- quently, rest and recreation were only found at the poker table until morning. Hon. Tod Robinson, of Sacramento, was so constant an attendant on the courts of Amador, that a history of its Bar would be incomplete without mention of his name; and time and again have the Court House walls at Jack- son rung with the eloquent voices of Honorables E. D. Baker, N. Greene Curtis, Frank Hereford, and others whose oratory has won for them a national fame, and still oftener have they resounded with the blows of
the Sheriff's knuckles upon his unoffending desk, in his efforts to bring order out of the chaos provoked by some sally of wit on the part of Col. A. P. Dud- ley, of Calaveras.
Judge Cre inor possessed the exceptional power and ability requisite to discharge the onerous duties that devolved upon him as the judicial head of so large a district as his, and infused into those who practiced in his courts something of his executive zeal. So quick of comprehension was he that but few explanatory words were necessary to convey to his clear, grasping and judicial mind all the salient points in the facts of the most complicated and cum- bersome cause; so impartial and just in his decisions and conclusions that no charge of personal favoritism, bribery, fraud or dishonesty was ever hinted at; so prompt in the dispatch of business pertaining to the courts that no attendant thereon complained of unnecessary detention; so firm and rigid in court regime, that it is said of him he imposed a fine upon himself for being ten minutes late at court one morning; so courteous to the elder and considerate to the younger members of the profession, that he possessed the highest esteem and fullest confidence of all; it was but a natural sequence that his example had much to do in moulding the character and habits of those who practiced before him. No judge ever retired from the bench with a fairer record than Hon. Charles M. Creanor; and if any errors of judg- ment are entered there, they are so obscured by the brilliancy of his sterling qualities that we pass them unnoticed.
As before stated, Amador was first in the fifth judicial district, with Hon. C. M. Creanor as Judge. In 1859, the district was divided, and Amador and Calaveras made to constitute the sixteenth judicial district, Hon. James H. Hardy being appointed the first Judge thereof. Hon. Wm. H. Badgley, of Cala- veras county, succeeded Judge Hardy. Judge Badgley was a highly cultivated and polished gen- tleman from the State of New York, and is now engaged in practice in that city. Judge Silas W. Brockway, a native of New York, an earnest laborer in his profession, an able lawyer, and pos- sessed of great force of character, succeeded Judge Badgley in 1864, Amador being then in the eleventh district, composed of Amador, El Dorado, and Cala- veras. Hon. A. C. Adams, now of San Francisco, succeeded Judge Brockway, and Hon. George II. Williams, of El Dorado, succeeded Judge Adams.
That this sketch may not justly be compared to the great play of Ilamlet with Hamlet omitted, the brief biographics of such prominent members of the Amador Bar as could be obtained, are appended.
J. W. ARMSTRONG was a blacksmith in early days in California, but took a notion that he could make a lawyer of himself, and commenced the study some twenty-two years since. Ile has been, and is, one of the most indefatigable students the world ever saw,
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exhibiting a most wonderful capacity for hard work. He commenced the practice in Amador county, some twenty years since, but, after some years, removed to Sacramento, where he has succeeded in building up a lucrative practice and a reputation for being one of the best informed men of the State. IIis acquirements are substantial and useful. Having little taste for the poetical adornments which orna- mented the orations of Baker and other famous speakers, he deals in hard, incontrovertible facts, piling them up mountain high, leaving no possible escape for his adversary. He is still in the prime of life, and has promise of many years of usefulness.
HONORABLE SAMUEL B. AXTELL was one of those cold, reticent men whose suaviter in modo won the respect rather than the friendship of men. Indeed, he did not care for the friendship of many, and those such as could be of use to him. Ile was possessed of a high sense of honor, polished in manner, and uncompromising in his zeal when in pursuit of some purpose, and he always had a purpose in view. As an advocate, and especially in jury trials, he had few equals in method, terseness of expression, and clear- ness of style. Educated at Oberlin College, in his native State, Ohio, his earliest forensic efforts, were in behalf of abolitionism; he afterwards went South, and there became imbued with Southern ideas and proclivities; settled in Jackson as early as 1853, and was elected the first District Attorney in 1854, and was re-elected in 1856, making a most excellent offi- cer, firm and unflinching in the performance of his duties, but never over zealous to the extent of per- secution. He subsequently removed to San Fran- cisco, and was there elected to Congress, where he was converted to Republicanism, having theretofore been a Democrat. He has never since returned to California, but was appointed Governor of Utah, and subsequently Governor of New Mexico, where his policy of Mormon conciliation became so obnox- ious to the Government that he was recalled. His merits, however, seemed not to have been ignored, for recently the position of Receiver of Publie Moneys in Idaho was tendered him, but whether he accepted has not transpired.
ROBERT M. BRIGGS. There has been no more active lawyer or politician in Amador than R. M. Briggs. His petite form seemed made up of a bun- dle of nerves, as unconscious of fatigue as the wires of an electric battery, which seemed to flash to his brain and concentrate there all the vast vitality which nature had so bound together, whenever occa- ยท sion demanded. He was always ready for a speech, at the Bar or on the stump, and never failed to hold together and enthuse his audience. Unexpected bursts of eloquence were sandwiched between per- tinent anecdotes in such profusion that his speeches were always received with unbounded applause. As an illustration of bis oratorical power, the closing of a speech he made before the Fiddletown Scott and
Graham Club, in 1852, is given. After expatiating upon the character of Scott, his services in the wars of 1812, and with Mexico, he electrified his hearers with these words :-
"When the end of all things shall have come; when the last great trump shall have sounded; when the angel of death shall be standing with one foot on the sea and the other on the land, swearing that time shall be no more; when the solid mount- ains of granite are rocking to their very foundations; the stars falling from their places in the heavens, and revolving worlds are wheeling into annihilation, then shall the names of Scott and Graham appear written all over the sky in letters of living fire !"
In 1861 a monster mass Union meeting was held in San Francisco, at which, it was announced, promi- nent speakers from every county in the State would be present. Briggs, who happened to be in the city at the time, was on the programme, from Amador. The meeting, which was a great success, was addressed by Colonel Baker and other noted ora- tors, and immense enthusiasm was manifested by the enormous concourse of people present. The press of San Francisco concurred in the statement that by far the best and most soul-stirring speech of the evening was that of R. M. Briggs, of Amador. As no extended reports of the speeches were given, the friends of Briggs interviewed him to ascertain what he said that so cclipsed the orators of the Pacific. He declared that he could not recollect a word. He said that upon being informed by the committee that he would be called upon, he endeav- ored to arrange his ideas into some form suitable to the occasion, and, toward evening sought to aseer- tain at about what time in the evening he would be called upon, that he might be enabled to cut his fuse the right length; that the committee seemed to have entirely forgotten him, and he concluded he had been left out in the cold, which made him so d-d mad that he went to a neighboring saloon and imbibed brandy and water, one glassful upon another, to drown his disappointment, until he became-well- pretty well elevated.
Late in the evening some one came in and said, " Briggs, they are calling for you." He started up toward the place of meeting on the plaza, where the speakers' stand was a narrow balcony. He was conscious that in his condition he would not be able to stand there a moment, but would fall headlong into the crowd below. He, therefore, took a dry- goods box which was near at hand, and placing it on the sidewalk mounted it, remarking that he was one of the people, and did not desire to get above them- preferred to be with them and of them-and then commenced his speech. His remembrance of the occasion was confined to the vociferous applause and enthusiasm, the like of which, he says, he never heard. Sober persons present declared that the crowd had listened to Baker and others until they
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were fully charged, and only required to be touched off to cause it to burst forth into a terrific explosion; Briggs' union pyrotechnics, in which appeared the "glorious old flag," the " American eagle," " liberty and equality," "union now and forever," like the colors of a revolving kaleidoscope, was the torch. Briggs obtained the sobriquet of " Brother Crawford" by his forensic illustrations of his adiens, as well as those of others made to the Democratic party, by repeating a sermon of a divine named Crawford, in which was related the circumstances of his departure from the field of his former labors, and in which the preacher narrated how he visited each object with which long association had made him familiar and to which he had become endeared, and each in turn seemed to say to him, "Farewell, Brother Crawford!" that as he rode down the lane upon his horse, the trees and grain in the adjacent fields seemed to solemnly nod to him and say, " Farewell, Brother Crawford; " that the very stones of the wall that marked the lane seemed possessed of melancholy voices, which cried out, " Farewell, Brother Craw- ford!" that his horse took fright at a hog that rushed across the lane before him, reared and plunged, and throwing his rider in the ditch, speeded down the road with heels flying in the air, seeming to snort aloud, " Farewell, Brother Crawford!"
Briggs was by no means deficient in talent as a writer, and as the editor of the local papers, attained a well-earned reputation. He once wrote for his paper a lengthy article on Mexican affairs during the French invasion, which was re-published in pamphlet form, and widely distributed in the Eastern States, and, not improbably, had an influence upon the Administration in taking its decisive position against foreign occupation. He was a native of Illinois, developed his muscle in the lead mines, was a dry-goods clerk in Galena, afterwards moved to Grant county, Wiseonsin, where he studied law, and was elected to the Legislature in 1851, and came to California in 1852. He was elected Assem- blyman, and twice District Attorney, in Amador; was appointed Register of the General Land Office at Independence, and is now Superior Judge of Mono county, residing at Bodie.
HON. A. C. BROWN, born at St. Charles, Missouri, January 10, 1816, crossed the plains from Laneaster, Grant county, Wisconsin, when he was admitted to practice in March, 1849, and settled in Jackson in September, 1851, where he has ever since resided, and where he is now engaged in the practice of his profession, having been admitted to the District Court in 1851, and to the Supreme Court in 1879. For three several terms he served in the Territorial and State Legislature of Wisconsin, and three times represented Amador county in the Assembly; was County Judge from 1877 up to the time the new State Constitution went into effeet in 1880. He has ever been an active politician, not a radical, but
professed Democrat, and a staunch supporter of the Union cause during the Rebellion. The father of a large family, and possessed of considerable wealth, chicfly invested in improved town property, he has ever been regarded as one of the substantial citizens of Amador county. More than once the fire-fiend has swept away his possessions, but his energy planned more imposing structures before the ashes were cold.
NASHI CORWITH BRIGGS was one of the few young men raised in California who preferred study to such pastimes as the freedom of our early society tolera- ted. Ile was born in Hannibal, Missouri, February 1, 1838, removed to Grant county, Wisconsin, in 1849, and, in 1852, came to California with his father, Hon. R. M. Briggs, and resided in Jackson from 1854 to 1864, where he studied law, and, being admitted by the District Court, formed a law copartnership with his father, in 1860. In 1834 he removed to Alpine county, and upon its organization was elected District Attorney in that year, was re-elected in 1866, and again in 1868. In December of the latter year he removed to Hollister, and upon the organ- ization of San Benito county, in 1874, was elected District Attorney, and re-elected in 1876. He mar- ried Miss Annie Barton, who was a native of Jack- son, and has an interesting family at Hollister, where he is now associated in the practice of the law with N. A. Hawkins; was admitted to the Supreme Court in October, 1869.
HON. R. BURNELL, though a lawyer by education, was better known as a politician. He was a native of New York, was a stock-raiser in early days, hav- ing accumulated something like fifty thousand dol- lars in raising cattle on the Sacramento plains. His career as a politician is related in the body of this history, and need not be repeated here. After the termination of his political career he removed to Napa, where he formed a law partnership with his brother-in-law, Chancellor Hartson, with whom he remained until his death, a year or two since.
A. CAMINETTI is a young man of Italian birth and California raising. He commenced the study of law under the tuition of Farley & Pawling, was admit- ted to practice in 1877, and two years later was eleeted Prosecuting Attorney, a position he has filled with marked ability. He is brilliant, thorough, and persevering, an easy and graceful speaker, with a good degree of that elasticity of temperament which enables him to adapt himself to circumstances. He has a promising future before him. He is Demo- cratie in polities, and had his name on the ticket for electors at the last Presidential contest. He did good service for his party in the campaign of 1880.
HON. H. A. CARTER is a native of New York, where he studied and practiced law previous to com- ing to California, which was in 1849. He was the first District Attorney of Calaveras county, and bas
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witnessed all the squabbles for the county seat since the time that Double Springs, with but one house, was the place of justice, and the jury-room the shade of a tree. His habit of advising litigants to settle with- out a lawsuit has militated against his success as a lawyer, but has made him a most valuable eitizen and neighbor. He has generally rested content with being the Pericles of his county, the man in whom all had unbounded confidence. He is a man of extensive and general information, communicative in his character, with a keen sense of the ludicrous, and tells a splendid story. He has spent the larger por- tion of life in the cultivation of the soil, preferring the comforts of home and the companionship of his neighbors to the turmoils of politics or the law. He was seduced into running for the Assembly in 1875, traveled over the county, smoked and joked with his friends, told some of his best stories, and was triumphantly elected, fairly walking over the course. It will be perceived that his strength as a lawyer is in advising every one to keep out of lawsuits. According to lawyers themselves, Judge Carter, if he had turned the force of his character that way, would have excelled in the high courts as a judge in equity.
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