USA > Georgia > The bench and bar of Georgia: memoirs and sketches. With an appendix, containing a court roll from 1790-1857, etc., volume II > Part 34
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The reader will perceive from the tone of these letters that Judge Strong cherished a deep religious principle, which sustained him in the many trials he was called to experience, owing to the gene- rosity* of his nature. Besides, there is genuine, practical wisdom in all his instructions to his son,-the manner in which he should read to improve his understanding and fix principles in his memory ; how to observe office-hours and a prompt business-system ; and- much to be valued by those possessing the infirmity-the method of conquering diffidence in public speaking. While his son was serving in the Creek War, what tenderness and patriotism did he exhibit ! the father breathed in every line. When prosecuting his law-studies, how earnestly did he open the field of labor and enjoin prudence in regard to both mind and body! But the letters display their own merit,-father conversing with son in the strict- est privacy, and yet in fine taste. Not a word drops to excite a blush or to lower the highest aspiration. All is upward and onward for the ennobling of character.
The author again recurs to the ancestry of Judge Strong, for the purpose of introducing the large expectations he once had as a lineal descendant of Baron De Graffenreid. Several years ago, Col. S. T. Bailey visited Europe to look into this claim, and, if necessary, to prosecute it judicially. Believing that a history of it would interest the profession, the author applied to Col. Bailey for an outline, which he kindly furnished, as follows :-
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the English Government invited the persecuted Protestant Palatines on the continent of Europe to take refuge in their dominions. This induced them to emigrate to Eng- land in such numbers that they soon became burdensome as objects of charity. Queen Anne, in 1711, proposed to Emanuel de Graaffenreidt, a wealthy and leading citizen of Switzerland, then on a visit to England, to colonize these Palatines in some of her American dominions, as he could speak most of the languages of Europe, and his wealth would justify the enterprise. He agreed to the proposition. The queen, by letters-patent, conferred upon him and his heirs male the right and title of a baron of Great Britain ; and they entered into a written covenant, that, when De Graffenreid should have settled a certain number of Palatines in the then- unappropriated territory lying in what is now North Carolina, the Govern- ment should convey to him and his heirs, by grant, fifty miles square of such tract as he might select, lying in said Province.
The contract was fulfilled on both sides. His colony on the Neuse River was the permanent beginning of the State of North Carolina, and the city of Newbern, founded by him, the first town in the State south of
* Dr. John G. Slappey informed the author that Judge Strong was ruined in his fortune as security for General Daniel Newnan.
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Albemarle Sound. He himself afterward settled a plantation in the then more civilized colony of Virginia, where he left his only son, Tscharnar, but himself returned to Europe, and died there in 1735, leaving an estate in Europe valued at half a million. By the laws of the Canton of Berne, there are societies, called Abbayes, for the maintenance and education of the families of deceased members. Membership is secured by the payment of a fixed sum, and the extent of support is regulated by the amount paid in. Three thousand dollars secures the amplest support and education.
On the death of a member, the society take immediate charge of his pro- perty and family, so far as to rigidly direct the arrangement of the property and its expenditures until the minors are of age ; and, in case of need, they are entitled to support forever after from the Abbaye to which the ancestor belonged. In case the heirs are in a foreign country, the real estate is rented and the money loaned by what is called the Board of Orphans ; and they can draw the interest, but can never have the principal sum of money, nor convey the real estate, until they by solemn act renounce their citizen- ship of Berne and membership of the Abbaye. The De Graffenreids had paid the highest sum, and thereby secured to their families the highest privilege of the Abbaye.
On the death of Baron De Graffenreid, leaving his only child in Ame- rica, the Government and the Abbaye took charge of his estate. By his will, he conveyed his money and personalty to his son in America, together with all his American possessions. His castle and lands adjoining near Berne he conveyed for life to some one in Switzerland, in satisfaction of some indebtment incurred in the removal of the Palatines,-remainder to his son in America and the heirs male of his body.
The great wealth possessed by his son in Virginia, and afterward by his family, in connection with the discomforts and perils of a voyage across the Atlantic, and the unsettled state of Europe, prevented the heirs in America from either claiming or inquiring into their rights in Switzer- land until the French took possession of Berne in 1798, when they were informed that Bonaparte and the Directory had confiscated their property, or, in plain English, had robbed them, as they did the citizens of Berne when their officers sent off sixty wagon-loads of specie and plate to Paris plundered from the public and private treasuries of Berne. My investi- gations on the spot in 1839 enabled me to prove by the most authentic records, political and judicial, that the charge against Napoleon and the French of having plundered the Orphans' Treasury was untrue. These records, as well as the testimony of the De Graffenreid family in Berne, prove that, when the French took possession of Berne and commenced their plundering, the keeper of the Orphans' Treasury conspired with one Busigney, a French nobleman living in Berne, to rob the Orphans' Treasury. The plan was this :- Busigney was to demand, at the head of an armed force, the key of the treasury, and threaten Graff, the treasurer, with instant military execution in case of refusal.
1
After thus perpetrating the robbery, Busigney wrote to the heirs in America that the French were the robbers. This tale was the more likely to be believed from the known fact that a De Graffenreid commanded that division of the Swiss army which, in a pitched battle, routed the French under General Brune, covering the field with the dead and wounded and taking from them great part of their artillery, only the day before Schauenburg defeated Erlach and captured Berne. After the restoration of the Swiss Government they instituted a strict inquiry
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touching the affair, and, learning the truth, promptly commenced legal proceedings against Busigney and Graff. The latter at once did justice on himself by suicide. Busigney died soon after. The suits proceeded against the heirs for sixteen years, when both estates proved insolvent, so that only about one thousand dollars was realized.
The heirs of the first taker of the castle and real estate contested the legality of the devise, and, after the Government had litigated the ques- tion with them in behalf of the American heirs for thirty years, the highest court of resort decided that, by the law of Switzerland, real estate could not be thus entailed,-whereby the defendants gained their suit. This castle, called Worb, six miles from Berne, is still in excellent pre- servation, and was valued in 1735 at twenty thousands pounds sterling. It was founded in the Middle Ages by a De Graffenreid, one of the fol- lowers of Berchthold Fifth.
Such is a brief narrative of how the large estate left by Judge Strong's ancestor in Europe was purloined from his descendants in America.
Having traced the venerable judge from his youth to a ripe old age, glancing at the high positions he held in the Government, it only remains to give a few particulars to complete the memoir as well as the author has been enabled.
Mrs. Strong was a lady of rare accomplishments and beauty, an ornament of her sex, justly the pride of her husband and the delight of her household. Her mind was highly cultivated and her address was perfectly engaging : she had a pleasant, soothing word for everybody, and was kind to everybody. She died in the year 1841. Judge Strong was intensely bereaved. His mind never recovered its sunshine afterward. He often spoke of her virtues, and of his cherished hope of joining her in a better world, where there would be no more separation.
Without comment, the author submits an extract from a private letter which he received from Creed T. Strong, Esq., the eldest son, who for many years has relinquished the practice of the law, and is now a thrifty planter in Sumter county. He says :-
It will be impossible for me to answer in detail, and with accuracy, all the questions contained in your letter. I will, however, reply to such as I can, and refer you to Dr. Woodson, who, for the present, has my father's family Bible in possession, and will cheerfully furnish you with a copy of the record.
My parents had twelve children :- Mary, Martha De Graffenreid, Creed Taylor, Samuel Miller, Sarah Taylor, Tscharnar De Graffenreid, (pro- nounced Tischainer,) Lucy Ann, Christopher Billup, Virginia Woodson, Rebecca, Evelina Lamar, and Blake Baker. As well as I remember, my sister Martha married Samuel T. Bailey in the fall of 1829, and died in January, 1847. Virginia was eleven years and some months old at her death in the summer of 1837. Tischainer was about seven years of age at his death. Lucy Ann died, aged two years. I do not remember the precise date of their deaths. Mary, their first-born, died in infancy. Rebecca also
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died in infancy. My mother left seven living children. Sister Martha died since the death of my mother. There are, I trust, six of us still living.
Since this letter was written, Blake Baker, the youngest of the family, died in Savannah from yellow fever, in 1854. Both parents, and more than half the children, are tenants of the grave, -no doubt " a family in heaven !"
Judge Strong was exceedingly social and benevolent. The ordeal of adversity had not dried up his sympathies for his fellow- men. In his speeches at the bar, in all his public addresses, and also in conversation, he was very deliberate,-in fact, what might be termed slow of speech,-not for the want of ideas and words, but rather to give them emphasis. He was a most agreeable com- panion in every circle. The habit of long pauses once gave rise to an amusing incident. Everybody in Georgia has heard of the "gentleman* from Paulding," who is notorious for wit and humor, and withal a little eccentric. While relating an anecdote, Judge Strong made one of his long pauses, when the gentleman began to whistle a merry tune. "Why, Mr. Jones, I am astonished at you !" said the veteran. "I beg your pardon, judge; I really thought you had finished," was the artless reply, to the amusement of all present except the judge, who, after giving a hint on man- ners, resumed his story.
At the hotels on the circuit the room occupied by Judge Strong was generally filled by his brethren of the bar to enjoy his conver- sation after supper. His stores of anecdote and old recollections were inexhaustible. He was a great admirer of Judge Early, and, previous to the establishment of the Supreme Court, was much in the habit of referring to his decisions as authority. The race of great judges was extinct, in his estimation ; nor did the bar afford any more Tom Peter Carneses. All wit perished with Dooly. The present generation of judges and lawyers was worthy enough, and, in some respects, an improvement on the past : still, no flashes illumined the judicial horizon now like those forty years ago!
In person Judge Strong very much resembled Gen. La Fayette when the latter visited the United States in 1824-25. He was a fine specimen of an old English gentleman, freely touched with the Virginia proneness to hospitality and to the merits of pedigree. The judge was no aristocrat in feeling; yet he had conceptions of living, had his fortune permitted, which would have illustrated the best society of the Old Dominion.
* Hon. John A. Jones.
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In his annual message, November, 1834, Gov. Lumpkin referred to the action of a majority of the judges in convention, in the fol- lowing terms :-
The act of the General Assembly passed the twenty-second day of De- cember last, "more effectually to provide for the government and protec- tion of the Indians," and for other purposes therein named, has met with considerable obstruction in carrying into effect the views and intentions of the Legislature,-such opposition and obstruction as cannot be over- looked by the present Legislature without prostrating the rights of her citizens and the sovereignty of our State at the feet of a combination of interested individuals and half-civilized men, supported and sustained as they are by the judge of the Superior Courts of the circuit in which these Indians chiefly reside, and countenanced at least by a majority of the judges of the Superior Courts of this State.
Five of the judges replied to the attack of the Executive by a publication in the Southern Recorder of November 12, 1834, as follows :-
VINDICATION OF THE JUDICIARY OF GEORGIA.
The recent message of his Excellency the Governor of Georgia to the Gene- ral Assembly of the State, in regard to the conduct of the Judiciary in the case of Walter S. Adair et al. vs. Hugh Hammill et al., imposes upon the undersigned the necessity of vindicating themselves from the imputations most unjustly attempted to be cast upon their judicial conduct by the charges and statements contained in that document. This, they believe, may be most easily and effectually done by a simple statement of the opinion expressed by the Convention of Judges upon which the decision of the presiding judge was based, and which has invoked so unexampled and severe an expression by one department of the Government upon the character and official conduct of another co-ordinate and independent branch of the same Government. The bill of complaint contained allegations which presented several distinct questions necessary to be adjudicated in the progress of the cause, or certainly upon its final hearing, but which were not touched by the decision because upon the demurrer, which admits all the allega- tions of the plaintiffs' bill to be true, there was enough alleged in the facts of the case to require that the demurrer should be overruled without refer- ence to the legal questions presented. It contained an allegation that the Cherokee Nation were the owners and occupants of the territory on which they reside,-a denial of European title by discovery, and an asser- tion of paramount title in the natives ; that the charter from the British Crown conferred no right upon the grantees to disturb the right of occu- pancy in the Indians ; that, being the exclusive owners of the soil, they should of right be governed by their own laws, usages, and customs; that the laws of Georgia had assumed a jurisdiction over the Indians, against which the complainants, protesting, nevertheless claim the protection of those laws so long as the right of government over them continues to be exercised by the State. It refers to various treaties entered into between the United States and the Cherokee Nation, and avers that by those treaties the Indian right of occupancy is recognised. None of the questions growing out of the foregoing allegations in the bill were considered by the
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majority of the Convention of Judges, no opinion expressed, and no deci- sion made upon them, it being altogether unnecessary to do so, for the reason before stated. The bill then charged and alleged the trespass and threatened ouster by the defendants pretending to act under authority of a pretended statute of the State of Georgia, which statute, so far as it attempts to give right to dispossess the Indians or interfere with their possession, is alleged to be null and void, because repugnant to the treaties referred to, the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Georgia. We here remark that the question of the constitutionality of the statute of Georgia, raised by these allegations in the bill, was not in any manner touched, or adjudicated, or involved in the opinion expressed by the majority of the convention, or the decision of the presiding judge, made in conformity with that opinion; because, by the succeeding allega- tions in the bill, the complainants set out rights consistent with the sta- tute of Georgia of 1833, and contended that if the said statute should be considered as constitutional and of full force and effect, that the premises occupied by the complainants were not such as the said law could operate upon, because they say that they are not amenable to its provisions, and that, their possession being joint, the premises aforesaid have been granted out contrary to the statute aforesaid. It will have been perceived that the attempt to dispossess the complainants was made by the grantee and the agent of the State, under the authority of the act of 1833, whilst, by the foregoing allegations, it is also seen that the case of the complainants was not embraced under those sections of that law which authorized, that proceeding by the agent, but was, indeed, consistent with the law. The convention referred to the eighth section of that act, limiting the right of occupancy of an Indian to one hundred and sixty acres, and specifying of what that possession shall consist, under which provisions in the statute it was obvious that the allegations in the bill were intended to bring the complainants' case. Upon this clause of the bill the court acted which affirmed that the complainants' right of occupancy was consistent with the act of 1833, and that, under that act, they were not liable to be turned out, not being amenable to those provisions which authorized the agent of the State to proceed against the Indian occupants of granted lots. Passing by all the other questions raised in this case by the allegations in the bill, or supposing them all to be against the complainants, there was, in the opinion of the convention, enough in this part of the bill to entitle the complainants to relief ; and the rule is that, if upon the case made by the bill the plaintiff is entitled to any relief, the demurrer must be overruled. It was the imperative duty of the courts thus to act, because the allegations in the bill, admitted to be true by the demurrer, required that the demurrer should be overruled. The decision, so far from impugning the act of the Legislature, was in advancement of the act, and the enforce- ment of rights secured under a particular section of that act.
The only remaining question which presented itself as important in this stage of the pleadings was as to the relief sought. The bill prayed an injunction to prevent trespass, and threatened ouster as contained in the written notice appended to the bill and to quiet the complainants in their possession. It was conceded by the convention that, as a general rule, a court of equity would not interpose to prevent a trespass or threatened ouster ; but that in peculiar cases, where irreparable injury might result, the remedy by injunction might be extended. This principle is supported by abundant authority. It was considered that the case made by the bill
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was of this character,-that the condition of the Indians was peculiar. The laws of the State had been recently extended over them : they were, to a great extent, ignorant of those laws and unaccustomed to their opera- tion. If turned out of possession of the premises allowed them by the laws of the State, they would be exposed to want and wretchedness, home- less and without a habitation. The whole country had been allotted : there was no spot of earth upon which they could find a lodgment; and, by the provisions of the ninth section of the same act, any Indian taking possession of any lot to which he was not entitled under the eighth section, and resisting or obstructing, by force or threats, the peaceable possession of the drawer, was not to be considered as an ordinary trespasser, but was made guilty of a high misdemeanor, for which he might be indicted and imprisoned at the discretion of the court. In addition to these considerations, it was believed that the Indians, having always been viewed as being in a state of pupilage under the Government, were peculiarly entitled to its care, to the jurisdiction of a court of equity, and the administration of that pre- ventive justice which a court of equity only can afford.
Having thus stated the opinion of a majority of the Convention of Judges, upon which the decision of the presiding judge was based, it will, we trust, be clearly perceived how utterly unfounded is the charge against the Judiciary of countenancing and supporting a combination of interested individuals and half-civilized men in obstructing the laws and prostrating the sovereignty of the State at their feet; that it will be further perceived that the court, in granting the injunction, has assumed no powers which are not expressly conferred upon it by the laws and the Constitution of the State, the exercise of which was not only required for the protection of the helpless and weak, but demanded by the justice, the honor and magnanimity of Georgia. It is not known from what high source the Executive information was obtained in relation to the argument before the judges ; but it is true that, though the constitutional point was argued and the whole ground of the bill was elaborately discussed by the counsel for the defendants, that the two points mainly relied on by the counsel for the plaintiffs, and the only points decided by the majority of the con- vention, are those which have been stated,-viz. : the right of the com- plainants as derived under the act of 1833, and the power of a court of equity to afford the relief sought in the particular case.
The court, we repeat, has assumed the exercise of no unconstitutional power in this case ; but it may well be questioned under what authority of the law or Constitution the Executive assumes the power of deter- mining the jurisdiction of the courts, of pointing out the limitations of power as appertaining to the equity and common law tribunals, and directing the applications of those remedies to particular cases pending before the courts; and, yet more questionable, the propriety of this high- est functionary of the Government influencing the determination of pri- vate rights litigating before the constituted and constitutional authority of the country by the expression of opinions made in the grave and solenin manner of an Executive communication to the Legislature, calculated to operate directly upon those rights now pending and undetermined. The grave charge is made that this decision is an interference with the right of trial by jury. We are wholly incapable of discovering this effect as resulting from the decision, since, the demurrer being overruled and the defendants ordered to answer, the case would proceed to trial before a jury upon the final hearing; and in the mean time, if, upon the coming
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in of the answer, the equity of the bill should be sworn off, or the truth of the allegations upon which the injunction was granted be denied, that injunction would of course have been dissolved.
We forbear further commentary upon this extraordinary and unparal- leled communication. Our object has been simply to vindicate ourselves from the most unprovoked and unmerited assault upon the purity and integrity of our judicial conduct, to exercise the right, which appertains to every individual in this country of rescuing bis reputation from unjust aspersion and transmitting it unsullied to his children.
We deem it proper to state in conclusion that the two distinguished and virtuous men who sat in that convention, and who have since died, Judges Lamar and Crawford, fully concurred in the decision; that Judge Dougherty was absent, and Judges Warner and Thomas dissented.
CHRISTOPHER B. STRONG, WM. W. HOLT, WILLIAM LAW, LOTT WARREN, JOHN W. HOOPER.
Judge Strong was the first member of the bar the author consulted in regard to these biographical sketches. Heartily approving the idea, he gave the author the names of several gentlemen to address, soliciting their aid in collecting materials for the work. Among the names thus given was that of Thomas Spalding, Esq., of McIntosh county. Judge Strong said, "Write to Mr. Spalding immediately ; for, like myself, he is get- ting old, and you may lose the opportunity of obtaining his valu- able recollections." The author did apply to Mr. Spalding, and was courteously answered. From Judge Strong one letter, and only one, was received in furtherance of this work, as the labor of writing was then quite irksome at his age. Had he lived a few months longer, it was the author's intention to spend several days with the judge, taking notes of his conversation, as hinted in his letter, of which the following is a copy :-
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