USA > Connecticut > Men of mark in Connecticut; ideals of American life told in biographies and autobiographies of eminent living Americans > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29
On September 22nd, 1906, Mr. Hill was unanimously re-nominated for Congressman.
GEORGE LEAVENS LILLEY
L ILLEY, GEORGE LEAVENS, Congressman, merchant, and real estate man, of Waterbury, New Haven County, Connecti- cut, was born in Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, August 3rd, 1859. He is descended from George Lilley, who settled in Reading, Massachusetts, in 1636. Mr. Lilley's father was John Leavens Lilley, a farmer and marketman, whom he describes as "a bundle of nervous energy and activity." His mother was Caroline Ward Adams Lilley, whose character was a great moral force in her son's life.
A heritage of ambition and plenty of work for the exercise of that ambition fell to Mr. Lilley's lot in his early youth, and he was exceptionally fitted for that lot. He was constitutionally rugged and vigorous and lived on a farm where there was ample chance to put his strength to constant and practical use. His brief education was ac- quired with great difficulty and many interruptions. He was very fond of history, which was the bulk of his reading. His chief school- ing consisted of two years at the Worcester Technical Institute.
Since "coming to man's estate" Mr. Lilley has been engaged in the real estate business and in the provision and produce business in Waterbury, and his prosperity has been as rapid and as great as his early ability and success promised. His value to his community and to the Republican party has been especially shown by his election to the State Legislature in November, 1900, and in 1902 by his election to Congress as Representative at large from Connecticut, and still further by his re-election to the latter office in 1904. In addition to his business interests and public services Mr. Lilley has many social and fraternal interests. He is a member of the Union League Club of New Haven, of the Waterbury Club, of the Masons, the Elks, and the Foresters. He is also a member of the State Republican Committee, and director of the Torrington National Bank. He is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church. His favorite amusements are horseback riding and automobiling. On June 17th, 1884, Mr. Lilley
Ly L Lilley
٠
75
GEORGE LEAVENS LILLEY
married Anna E. H. Steele. All of the three children who have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Lilley are now living.
In summing up the causes of his success in life Mr. Lilley says that the first impulse to win that success came in those early hours of the early days of his life, when he first experienced mercantile life and developed the merchant's instinct. Contact with other men has been the chief influence upon his success in later life. As to the results he says, "No man has ever accomplished all he hoped. The best he can do is to keep everlastingly at it, trying with all his might;" and for the further guidance of those coming after him he emphasizes the importance of cultivating "unadulterated honesty, frankness, and politeness, coupled with a will to do and to dare-a determination to permit no obstacles to stand in the way of achieving the goal of an honest ambition," and he adds, "It is my belief that every young man with the Roosevelt-Jerome energy and the foregoing traits can carry to a successful conclusion anything he undertakes."
On September 20th, 1906, Mr. Lilley was unanimously re-nomi- nated for Congress.
EDWIN WERTER HIGGINS
H IGGINS, EDWIN WERTER, lawyer and Congressman, of Norwich, New London County, Connecticut, was born in Clinton, Middlesex County, Connecticut, July 2nd, 1874, the son of Werter C. Higgins and Grace A. Higgins, who was the daughter of Henry M. and Ann Crane Taintor. Silas Higgins, the paternal grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was for years prominent in the business and public life of eastern Connecticut. Mr. Higgins' father is a manufacturer of steam heaters and a man whose most prom- inent characteristic is fidelity to principle. Mr. Higgins' earliest ances- tors in America were Jonathan Sexton, who came from England to Plymouth in 1620, and later settled in Windsor, Connecticut; Medad Taintor, who was born in 1757 and came from England to Branford, Connecticut, and Heman Higgins of Midddletown, Connecticut. The early ancestors of Mr. Higgins were identified with the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies and three of his great-grandfathers took part in the American Revolution.
Most of Mr. Higgins' youth was spent in Norwich, Connecticut, where from choice during vacation periods he often busied himself with both manual and clerical work in the shops and offices of Nor- wich. He was blessed with good health and found the keenest enjoy- ment in outdoor sports. After a course at the Norwich Free Academy he entered the law department of Yale University and graduated in 1897 with the degree of Bachelor of Laws. While at Yale he served one term as secretary of the Kent Club, the leading debating society of the law department, and became a member of the Yale chapter of Phi Sigma Kappa.
Since leaving college Mr. Higgins has devoted himself to the practice of law, and his profession with the performance of various public services has occupied Mr. Higgins' time since graduation. In 1899 he was elected a member of the General Assembly as representa- tive from Norwich and served on the judiciary committee. From 1900 until he resigned in 1905 he served as health officer for New
Edwin W. Higgins
79
EDWIN WERTER HIGGINS
London County, being appointed by the Judges of the Superior Court of the State; from 1901 to 1902 he was corporation counsel for the city of Norwich ; in 1904 he was a delegate to the Republican National Con- vention at Chicago, representing Connecticut on the committee on resolutions ; in 1905 he was appointed prosecuting attorney of Nor- wich and has been for six years and is now a member of the Repub- lican State Central Committee. On October 2nd, 1905, he was given still higher political honor by his election as Representative from the Third District in the Congress of the United States. Since 1903 he has been director and secretary of the Groton and Stonington Street Railway Company and is connected with other prominent busi- ness interests in his section of the State. On October 6th, 1906, Mr. Higgins was unanimously re-nominated for Congress.
On September 21st, 1904, Mr. Higgins married Alice M. Neff of Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Mr. Higgins served three years and a half in Co. 9, C. N. G., Third Regiment, is a member of the Chelsea Boat Club, the Arcanum Club of Norwich, the Sons of the American Revolution of Connecticut and the Citizens Corp of the G. A. R. He is particularly fond of outdoor life and his favorite sports are hunting and fishing. Though still a young man, Mr. Higgins has won himself a place of distinction as a lawyer and as a public man, as his pro- fessional and political offices show.
DAVID TORRANCE
T ORRANCE, DAVID, late Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, the son of Walter and Annie Tor- rance, was born near Edinburgh, Scotland, March 3rd, 1840. After the death of his father, his mother with her young children came to this country in 1849 and settled at Norwich, Connecticut. At the age of nine David went to work in a cotton mill there, and sub- sequently learned and for some years worked at the trade of paper making.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, his younger brother, James Torrance, went out with the Third Connecticut Volunteers, served his term and re-enlisted in the Thirteenth Regiment, meeting his death with that devoted band of Union soldiers at Port Hudson in 1863. David felt constrained to remain at his work till that stirring summer of 1862, when illusions as to the uprising were dissipated and the call of duty sounded in sternest tones for such as he. On the 17th of July, 1862, he enlisted as a private in Company A of the Eighteenth Con- necticut Volunteers, and was speedily made a sergeant in the company.
On July 13th, 1863, the regiment saw its first fighting. General Milroy with barely 7,000 men undertook to hold back General Early with 30,000 men and eighty-seven field guns, at Winchester, Virginia. On the 15th, the Eighteenth, commanded by Colonel William G. Ely, was in the van in a charge made upon one of the enemy's batteries. After three successive but unavailing charges in which the regiment lost heavily, it was forced to surrender, and Torrance with many of his comrades became a prisoner of war. General Walker of Stone- wall Jackson's brigade feelingly voiced the admiration of the foe for the bravery displayed by the regiment and, in attestation, returned Colonel Ely's sword to him upon the field.
General Milroy said to these brave men, after they had returned from captivity : "To your valor I owe my safety. You come from a state whose soldiers never disgrace themselves nor their flag. I am proud of you."
David Torrance
83
DAVID TORRANCE
The employment of negroes as soldiers became one of the gravest questions of the hour. Bitterly opposed as the plan was in some quarters and desperate as the undertaking seemed for the colored men, President Lincoln and his advisers saw that the success of the experi- ment must depend primarily upon the character of the men chosen to lead such troops. When Connecticut offered as its share at that time the Twenty-ninth Regiment, colored, early in 1864, William B. Wooster, an able Derby lawyer, recently lieutenant colonel of the Twen- tieth Regiment, was appointed to its command and David Torrance was promoted from the Eighteenth Regiment, on January 30th of that year, to be captain of Company A of the Twenty-ninth. Incidentally, there was formed a friendship between colonel and captain which clearly was most precious to both and which was to continue through war and peace till the colonel received his final "muster out."
Thus with his memories of the bitterest that war can offer, with the early summer scenes at Libby Prison and Belle Isle fresh in his young mind, he cast his lot with soldiers fighting to break the shackles from men, women, and children of their own race. Unflinching in the face of the horrors meted out to them by an infuriated enemy, the regiment reached the goal of its ambition and became the envied of its fellows when on that morning of April 3rd, 1865, after weeks of peril in Fort Harrison, it was the first of the Federal infantry in pursuit of Lee and the first of the Federal infantry to reach the gates of Rich- mond.
The captain had changed the bars on his straps for the gold leaf of major on July 21st, 1864, and the gold leaf for the silver leaf of lieutenant colonel on November 24th, of that year. After the fall of Richmond, he remained with his regiment in the defenses there for a time, later did guard duty in Maryland and then, in the summer, sailed with the command for Texas. While in camp at Brownsville, in Texas, orders came for transportation to Connecticut, October 14th, to be mustered out. Reaching New Orleans the regiment was kept there from October 27th to November 11th and finally reached Hartford, where it was discharged, November 11th. The date of the muster out was October 24th,
In his report, Lieutenant Colonel Torrance said, on the important question of colored troops : "The poor rights of a soldier were denied them. Their actions were narrowly watched and the slightest faults
84
DAVID TORRANCE
severely commented upon. In spite of all this, the negro soldier fought willingly and bravely; and with his rifle alone he has vindi- cated his manhood, and stands confessed to-day as second in bravery to none." And this lieutenant-colonel has lived to see his judgment con- firmed on the plains, at Santiago and in the Philippines.
It is well to quote in this connection from Governor Bucking- ham's speech of welcome to the regiment on its return to Connecticut soil : "Show by your acquirements and your devotion to duty in civil life that you are as true to virtue and the interests of government and country as you have been while in the army, and soon the voice of a majority of liberty-loving free men will be heard demanding for you every right and privilege to which your intelligence and moral charac- ter shall entitle you."
The paths of peace for both the colonel and his second in com- mand led to Derby, where Colonel Wooster resumed his large and long neglected law practice, and Lieutenant Colonel Torrance, in the same office, continued the study of law which he had begun at the camp fire and for which he had shown a special aptitude. The soldierly student had married Miss Annie France on February 11th, 1864, the year be- fore his muster out, and now that his duty to his country had been dis- charged, it was his purpose to establish a home worthy of his young wife. Making rapid progress in his studies, he was admitted to prac- tice at the bar in 1868, and the time was not long before colonel and lieutenant colonel, whose lives had been linked together by the war, were united in civil life under the firm name of Wooster & Torrance, a relation that continued till the appointment of the junior member as judge in 1885,
Judge Torrance had three children, two sons, Walter S. and James F., living in Derby, and one daughter, Margaret, the wife of Walter W. Holmes of Waterbury. After a short period of years following his admission to the bar, there was further call to public duty and the war veteran was sent to the Legislature to represent Derby, in the year 1871, and again for the next session. In 1878, he was elected Secretary of the State, on the Republican ticket, which was headed by the late Charles B. Andrews of Litchfield, subsequently chief justice. The public record for the succeeding years reads : Appointed judge of the New Haven Court of Common Pleas in 1880 to serve for four years from 1881; at the expiration of that term, appointed by
85
DAVID TORRANCE
Governor Henry B. Harrison to be judge of the Superior Court; in 1890, appointed by Governor Morgan G. Bulkeley to be judge of the Supreme Court of Errors ; re-appointed, and from October 1st, 1901, until his recent death, chief justice-term 1901 to 1909.
In still other ways his services were sought. In 1899, Yale University, which has awarded him the honorary degree of Master of Arts, chose him a member of the faculty, to take the chair on evidence. His voice was heard in the councils of the Grand Army of the Republic, his name was on the list of members of the Army and Navy Club of Connecticut and he was a Free Mason. His religious affiliations were with the Congregational Church. In his home city he allied himself with a group of men who find recreation in the study of subjects of political science and history. His residence was at No. 105 Atwater avenue, Derby.
Judge Torrance died at his home in Derby, September 6th, 1906.
FREDERIC BYRON HALL
H ALL, FREDERIC BYRON, lawyer and judge of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, was born in Saratoga Springs, Saratoga County, New York, February 20th, 1843. His father, Jonathan Hall, 4th, son of Jonathan, 3rd, and Phebe (Brit- ton) Hall, was a machinist and iron foundryman and married Livonia Hayward, a descendant from Thomas Hayward, who came from Ayles- ford, Kent, England, to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. Jona- than Hall's first American ancestor, Thomas Hall, came to America in 1718 with his wife Mary Dickey, in company with a body of English colonists, who left Londonderry in the North of Ireland in that year and settled on lands in New Hampshire granted to the colony and they named the settlement Londonderry, the territory being subsequently divided into four townships, in one of which is located the famous manufacturing city of Manchester, New Hampshire.
Frederic Byron Hall was brought up in the village of Saratoga Springs, where he began to earn his own living by selling newspapers. He removed to Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1858 and found employ- ment as a molder in the foundry of the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine Company, and he continued to work there during his vaca- tions from school and college and while studying law. His mother, a superior woman, intellectually, morally and spiritually, directed his early life in the way of her own beautiful example and encouraged him to work and study. The financial needs of the family forced the necessity of labor foremost and his school attendance during his boy- hood days was secondary to bread winning. As he became able to earn better wages, he supplemented home study, which he had always kept up under the inspiration of his mother, who was desirous that he should be a lawyer, with attendance at the Connecticut Literary In- stitute, Suffield, and he was graduated at that school in 1862 and the next year he matriculated at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, and was graduated A.B., 1867. He studied law in the office of Henry S. Sanford of Bridgeport, and was admitted to the Fairfield
F.B Hall
89
FREDERIC BYRON HALL
County Bar in 1870. He was a partner in the practice of law with Goodwin Stoddard, 1870-77.
He was married January 1st, 1872, to Jennie A., daughter of George and Jennett Lewis of Stratford, Connecticut, and the three children born of this marriage are Alice Burr Hall, now wife of William B. Boardman, member of the bar of Fairfield County, Con- necticut, Dwight Hubbell Hall and Lewis Frederic Hall, both gradu- ates of Brown University.
His judicial labors began in 1877, when he was appointed judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Fairfield County for the term of four years and he has been twice re-appointed to the same position, serving 1877-89. In 1889 he was appointed judge of the Superior Court and re-appointed in 1897. In September, 1897, Governor Cook appointed him judge of the Supreme Court of Errors to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Judge Fenn and, at the next session of the Legislature in 1899, he was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of Errors for the term of eight years. Judge Hall's military service in the Civil War was cut short by physical disability resulting from typhoid fever contracted during the service. He enlisted in Company D, Seventeenth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, in 1862, when nine- teen years old, but he was honorably discharged before the close of the next year and sent home to save his life.
He is a member of the University Club of New York, and Brown University by a special vote taken in 1890 gave him the honor- ary degree of A.M. and Yale University at the Commencement exer- cises of 1890 conferred on him a similar degree. He is a voting mem- ber of the Republican party, but takes no active part in political cam- paigns, always regarding the high office which he holds as superior to and outside the field of political controversy. His home is on Mill Hill Avenue, Bridgeport.
His life is a splendid example to young men of the possibilities open to any young man in America who is willing to labor and to study. He, with the help of the product of his own work and the advice and encouragement of an ambitious mother, became a man of mark-so can the young reader of this biography.
SIMEON EBEN BALDWIN
B ALDWIN, SIMEON EBEN, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, was born in New Haven, Con- necticut, on February 5th, 1840, as the son of Roger Sherman Baldwin and Emily (Perkins) Baldwin. He is a descendant of sev- eral of the leading families of New England. His father was a representative in the General Assembly, a state senator, governor of Connecticut, a United States senator and a presidential elector-at- large, in 1860, when he voted for Abraham Lincoln. As one of the foremost lawyers of the State he was associated in 1839 with John Quincy Adams in an important case before the United States Supreme Court. His grandfather was a judge of the Supreme Court of Errors, and his great-grandfather was Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His first American ancestor was John Baldwin, who came from England in the early part of the seventeenth century and settled first in Guilford and later in Nor- wich. A son of John Baldwin was well known as a captain in the colonial militia. On his mother's side Judge Baldwin counts among his ancestors John Haynes, who has the unique distinction of being governor first of Massachusetts and then of Connecticut, Governor William Pitkin of Connecticut, and Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony.
Judge Baldwin was brought up in the city of his birth, New Haven. His early education was received at the Hopkins Grammar School where he was prepared for college. He entered Yale and was graduated in the class of 1861, receiving the degree of A.B. Having decided to become a lawyer he studied first at the Yale and then at the Harvard Law School. After two years and without waiting to take a degree, he began the practice of his profession in his father's law office in New Haven. Here his natural ability, careful preliminary training in the law and the able assistance of his father combined to assure him success. He quickly acquired a reputation as an able and conscientious lawyer, and in a few years gained a large and profitable clientage. But he was destined to make his name as a teacher and
Lerin 6. Baldwin
93
SIMEON EBEN BALDWIN
interpreter of the law rather than in private practice. In 1869 he was offered and he accepted an instructorship at the Yale Law School. His ability as an educator was soon recognized by the University authori- ties and in 1872 he was appointed a professor of constitutional and mercantile law. The same year the State Legislature named him as a member of a commission to revise the educational laws of Connecti- cut. He took an important part in the work of this commission, and his services were recognized by the members of the General Assembly. The following year he was appointed on a similar commission to revise the general statutes of the State. His legal knowledge and experience enabled him to lend valuable assistance in the performance of this delicate and difficult task. His next important service to the public was in 1877 when as a member of the committee on jurisprudence of the State Bar Association of Connecticut he drew up and presented the report in favor of adopting the system of code pleadings in civil actions. He is to-day remembered as one of the originators of the movement in favor of introducing this progressive reform in the legal system of the State. In 1885 he served as one of the leading members on a commission which recommended a better method of taxation, and it was he who drew up the report which resulted in a great increase in the revenues of the State. During these years of active public service he continued his duties as professor at the Yale Law School. He also took the leading part in the founding and organizing of the American Bar Association and in 1890 he was elected its president. The following year Harvard University conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. From 1899 to 1901 he was president of the International Law Association of London.
Professor Baldwin was by this time recognized as one of the lead- ing jurists in the State and his reputation extended throughout the country and to England. In 1893 he was elected an associate judge of the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, an office which he still holds. As a professor and later as a judge he has made several valua- ble contributions to legal literature. He is the author of "Baldwin's Digest of the Connecticut Law Reports" (2 vols.), 1871, 1882; of "Modern Political Institutions," 1898; of "American Railroad Law," and of "The American Judiciary." He is co-author of "Two Centuries Growth of American Law," 1901, and has written numerous articles for magazines and literary societies, also many pamphlets and ad- dresses.
94
SIMEON EBEN BALDWIN
Although the greater portion of Judge Baldwin's time has been devoted to the study, practice, teaching and interpretation of the law, he has found ample opportunity to give serious attention to politics, history and social science as well as to church and municipal affairs. His political affiliations have been with the Democratic party. He took a prominent part in the presidential campaign of 1884, which resulted in sending Grover Cleveland to Washington as the first Democratic president since the Civil War. In 1889 he was made president of the State Democratic Club. His present judicial position compels him to refrain from taking an active part in political contests, but he retains a keen interest in public affairs. He is an enthusiastic student of history, especially of the history of law and of his own State. For twelve years until 1896, he was president of the New Haven Colony Historical Society and during 1899 he was president of the Connecticut Archaeological Society. In 1905 he was elected president of the American Historical Association. He is a member of the American Antiquarian Society and of the National In- stitute of Arts and Letters, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and of the Colonial Society of Mas- sachusetts. On legal history he is one of the recognized authorities of the country. He has given much time to the study of political and social science, and, what is of far greater importance to his fellow men, he has put his knowledge thus gained to practical use, by writ- ing text-books and by suggesting legislation along progressive lines. In recognition of his services as a student of social questions he was, in 1897, elected president of the American Social Science Association, a position which he held for two years. In 1900 he was sent as a delegate from the United States to the International Prison Congress held at Brussels. In religious affairs also Judge Baldwin is promi- nent. He is a member of the Congregational Church and has served as a moderator of the General Conference. As president of the local Young Men's Christian Association he has given encouragement to that great organization of practical Christian effort. In the municipal affairs of the city in which he has always lived Judge Baldwin has rendered his full share of service as a public spirited citizen. He was active in the promotion of the New Haven Park System and es- pecially in the establishment of East Rock Park.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.