USA > Illinois > Champaign County > A Standard history of Champaign County Illinois : an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, civic and social development : a chronicle of the people, with family lineage and memoirs, Volume I > Part 19
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agent from 1862 to 1865, was chosen county judge of Clark County in 1872, and died while on a visit to Kentucky, in March, 1879.
With Judge Harlan appeared Sheriff-elect Andrew Stevenson, ready to enforce any decrees of the court, and Thomson R. Webber was appointed circuit clerk. The grand jury impaneled and sworn com- prised Jacob Bartley (foreman), Samuel Wilson, James Copeland, Jonathan Maxwell, William Jackson, James Osborn, John Bryan, Benjamin Dulemy, John Baily, Sr., John Jayne, Larkin Deer, George Bartley, Isaac Busey, Charles Busey, Charles Hapstonstall, Joshua Trickle, Matthew Busey and Joshua Taylor.
The official bonds of the sheriff, clerk and Coroner Adam Yeazel, were approved, and the two cases on the calendar were continued. The latter were two actions for slander, McDonald Osborn vs. William Phillips and the same plaintiff against Nathaniel Hanline.
Before the end of the day the Grand Jury reported that there were no indictments to be made; whereupon that body was discharged and the court adjourned.
SECOND TERM OF CIRCUIT COURT
The second term of the Circuit Court was held at the house and store of Israel Knapp, the successor, in occupancy and proprietorship, of Mr. Alexander, in October, 1835. It was held by Judge Alexander F. Grant of Shawneetown and occupied two days. It was one of his last appearances on the bench, or in life. He was a lawyer and a judge of marked ability. In February, 1835, he had been appointed by the Legislature as judge of the third circuit to succeed Henry Eddy, the pioneer lawyer and editor of Shawneetown, under whom he had studied his profession. Soon after holding court at Urbana, Judge Grant died in Vandalia, Fayette County.
The petit jurors sworn to try the slander suit of Osborn against Phillips were Jacob Heater, John Jayne, Nelson Powell, William Cor- ray, James Copeland, John Baily, Sr., Hiram Rankin, Frederick Bouse, Garret Moore, Isaac Burris, William Galliher and Hiram Johnson. The record shows that the jury returned a verdict in favor of Phillips, and evidently the second suit was not pressed. Samuel McRoberts, Osborn's attorney, who appeared at this October term as the first lawyer to try a case in the Circuit Court of Champaign County, was then the receiver at the Danville Land Office and stood high in his profession. While a resident of Monroe County, in the late '20s, he had served as one of the circuit judges of the state. In 1841 he was elected to the
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United States Senate and served in that body until his death in 1842. But despite his ability and standing he lost the slander cases brought before Judge Grant.
FIRST CRIMINAL INDICTMENT
There was no April term in 1836, but at the October term of that year Justin Harlan again opened court. It convened in the temporary courthouse. The court rendered a judgment by default against Isaiah Corray in favor of Mr. Chestnut for $265. The grand jury, of which Colonel M. W. Busey was foreman, returned the first criminal indict- ment in the legal history of the county. Aaron Shaw, the state's
OLD KELLY TAVERN, ST. JOSEPH (One of Lincoln's stopping places)
attorney, charged John H. Busey with having disturbed the peace. The indictment was quashed at the April term, which also convened in the make-shift courthouse. It appears that both bench and bar were more comfortable in private houses than in official quarters, for the Septem- ber term of 1837 was held at the residence of Isaac Busey.
POPULAR RESORT FOR BENCH AND BAR
Although this temporary courthouse was notably unpopular with the pioneer judiciary and legal practitioners of Champaign County, it proved to be the seed of something very dear to the old-time members of the profession. The lot upon which it was originally built, with an adjoining tract, was sold to Asahel Brauer in 1841. He moved the log house to the consolidated site, clapboarded it, added to it, and opened
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the Urbana House. The hotel was long the best stopping place afforded by the county seat, a favorite headquarters of professional life, and provided shelter and food to such judges as Treat and the Davises, and such lawyers as Lincoln, Linder, Leonard Swett, Kirby Benedict, D. B. Campbell, Josiah Lamborn, J. A. McDougall, J. N. Roberts, Amzi McWilliams and John Pearson. In time, the Urbana House became the Pennsylvania House, with which the names of John II. Thomas, C. M. Vanderveer and Samuel Waters are associated as proprietors and hosts.
As EFFECTIVE AS BOLTS AND BARS
Until 1841 the bench and bar of Champaign County, at their head- quarters in Urbana, were shifted around from pillar to post. The temporary courthouse of 1836, as well as the little frame building of 1837, was abandoned, and the court and lawyers were accommodated in the log houses of various residents. Until 1840 there was not even an excuse for a jail, although several petty criminals had been convicted. It is related that on one occasion a prisoner, having been tried, and while awaiting the verdict of the jury deliberating in a nearby thicket of hazel brush, was detained by the sheriff thus: His hands were tied behind him and his feet were bound together; a sapling was bent down and fastened to his feet, which, being left free, raised the legs of the prisoner their length from the ground. He was about as secure as bolts and bars would have made him.
AUGUSTUS C. FRENCH
Among the practitioners of these primitive days before the Circuit Court, Judge Cunningham mentions Aaron Shaw, then of Clark County ; O. B. Ficklin, of Charleston, Coles County ; John J. Brown, of Danville; Matthew Van Deveer, of Champaign County, and Augustus C. French, of Crawford County. Three of those mentioned earned national reputations. After serving in the Legislature several terms, and as presidential elector in 1844, Mr. French was elected by the Democrats as the ninth governor of Illinois and thus served in 1846-52. He was afterward appointed state bank commissioner, was a member of the constitutional convention of 1862, and died at Lebanon, where he had held the chair of law at McKendree College, in September, 1864.
AARON SHAW AND O. B. FICKLIN
Both Aaron Shaw and O. B. Ficklin served several terms in Con- gress. Mr. Shaw was a member of the first Internal Improvements 1-12
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convention of Illinois, was states attorney of Lawrence County and a member of the Legislature; judge of the twenty-fifth circuit for four years and served in the thirty-fifth and forty-eighth Congresses, 1856 and 1882, respectively.
Orlando B. Ficklin served in the Legislature and as state's attorney, while a resident of Wabash County; three terms in the Legislature, after he had moved to Charleston (1838) ; was a congressman from Coles County, in 1843-49 and 1851-53, and subsequently presidential elector ; delegate to national Democratic convention and a member of the state constitutional convention of 1862. He died at Charleston May 5, 1886.
CIRCUIT DUTIES AGAIN IMPOSED ON SUPREME COURT
The foregoing sketches should convey an idea of the large caliber of the early judges and lawyers who graced the profession in Champaign County during the earlier period of its history. Among the occupants of the Circuit bench none stood higher than Justin Harlan, who con- tinued to preside in Champaign County until he was legislated out of office by the act of February 10, 1841. That measure repealed all acts authorizing the election of circuit judges by the Legislature; provided for the appointment of five additional associate judges of the Supreme Court, making nine in all; reimposed the circuit duties on the members of the State Supreme Court, and divided the state into nine circuits.
THE COUNTY IN THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
Under the law of 1841 Champaign County was included in the eighth circuit which embraced the fifteen counties between the Illinois River and the Indiana line, with Livingston on the north and Sangamon on the south. Judge Samuel H. Treat was assigned to that circuit, thus succeeding Justin Harlan.
Judge Treat, who had been a resident of Springfield for a number of years and appointed to the Circuit Court in 1839, at the reorganiza- tion of the Supreme Court in 1841, became one of the leading members of that body, and at the time of the adoption of the constitution of 1848 was acting chief justice. He continued to preside over the court in Champaign County until that year, remaining on the Supreme bench under the new constitution until 1855, when he resigned to assume the judgeship of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. He was filling that position at the time of his death, which occurred at Springfield, March 27, 1887, and concluded one of the longest judicial careers in the history of the state.
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FIRST MURDER TRIAL IN THE COUNTY
The name of the first murderer and his victim are alike unknown. A tradition, however, informs us that in early times, before the settle- ment of this county, a thief who had stolen a horse in Indiana, fled with his booty westward. A band of "regulators" pursued and overtook him at a point known as Tow Head, an isolated clump of trees on the ridge a mile north of the present village of Philo. Overcome by fatigue, he was sleeping beneath a tree, with the stolen horse tethered near. The avengers sent a rifle-ball crashing through his brain, and he passed without a struggle from the repose of sleep to the repose of death. His body was left to rot unburied, and the bleached skeleton was seen by early settlers who passed the lonely grove.
The first murder in this county for which there was a trial and conviction, was that known as the Weaver-Hiltibran murder. On the 10th day of October, 1844, William Weaver, of Urbana, a miserable, drunken, reckless wretch, shot David Hiltibran in the right side with a rifle, without any apparent motive, except the fiendish recklessness that often attends men who have become besotted. He was arrested and indicted at the May term of 1845 by a grand jury, of which William D. Somers was foreman. Judge Treat was on the bench; J. A. Mc- Dougall, attorney for the State, T. R. Webber, clerk, and Wilson Lewis, sheriff.
The following jurors tried the case: Joseph White, Harrison W. Drellinger, Alexander Walter, Henry Sadorus, W. H. Brobst, Charles W. Pitchan, David Hammer, John Hammer, John Mead, Winston Somers, Michael Finebaugh, and Wells Edgerton.
On the opening of the trial, Abraham Lincoln, who became before his death "the foremost man of all the world," and Asahel Gridley, were appointed by the court to defend the prisoner, but his guilt was too well established during the trial to admit of any verdict but "guilty," and William Weaver was accordingly sentenced to be hung on Friday, June 27, 1845. A few days, however, before the day of execution, he made his escape from jail, fled to Wisconsin, and was never recaptured. IIe subsequently changed his name, reformed, and lived a decent life. His near view of the gallows seems to have somewhat revolutionized him and put him on his good behavior.
UNDER THE 1848 CONSTITUTION
The constitution of 1848 made all judicial officers elective by the people, and provided for a Supreme Court of three judges, Circuit,
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County and Justices' Courts; also conferred upon the Legislature power to create inferior municipal courts. Appeals lay from the Circuit courts to the Supreme Court for the particular division in which the county might be located. The term of office for Supreme Court judges was nine years and for Circuit judges, six. Vacancies were to be filled by popular election, unless the unexpired term of the deceased or retiring incumbent was less than one year, in which case the governor was authorized to appoint. Circuit courts were vested with appellate jurisdiction from inferior tribunals, and each was required to hold at least two terms annually in each county, as might be fixed by statute.
DAVID DAVIS
Judge David Davis, who succeeded Judge Samuel H. Treat as the first Circuit judge for this circuit, under the constitution of 1848, attained perhaps the highest national rank of any one who has appeared upon any Champaign County bench. His service extended from the May term of 1849 until the end of the April term of 1861, when Cham- paign County was set off from the Eighth and attached to the Twenty- seventh circuit. Previous to his election as judge of the Eighth circuit, Judge David had practiced law at Bloomington for a number of years and served a term in the lower house of the Legislature. He was reelected to the bench in 1855 and 1861, resigning in the following year to ascend the bench of the United States Supreme Court, under appointment of his close friend, Lincoln. Resigning from the national Supreme Court to become United States senator in 1887, he served until the end of his term in 1885, and died in June of the following year, at his home in Bloomington.
JOSEPH G. CANNON'S MAIDEN PROSECUTION
The last term held by Judge Davis in Urbana, that of April, 1861, was notable in many ways. Not only did it mark the severing of strongly cemented relations which had been formed by his honorable and able course as a circuit judge, and his warm and attractive personal character, but the birth-pangs of the Civil War were well advanced, and the second murder trial in the history of the county was tried during that period, under the maiden prosecution of the newly elected attorney of the circuit, Joseph G. Cannon. John Murphy had been indicted for the murder of S. S. Rankin, and while Mr. Cannon was making his closing address, as prosecuting attorney of the circuit, Beauregard opened fire upon Fort Sumter. Mr. Cannon was then a struggling
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young lawyer of Danville, and held the position of state's attorney until 1868. A few years afterward he commenced his phenomenal career as a congressman.
OLIVER L. DAVIS
Oliver L. Davis was elected judge of the new Twenty-seventh circuit in March, 1861, at which time Mr. Cannon was chosen prosecuting attorney. He was also from Danville and had served several terms in the General Assembly before being elected to the bench. He resigned in 1866, but served a second term in 1873-79, having been assigned to the Appellate bench in 1877. He died January 12, 1892.
In 1866 Judge Oliver L. Davis was succeeded by James Steele, of Paris, Edgar County, who held court but one term before the county was taken from the Twenty-seventh circuit and attached to the Seven- teenth, over which Charles Emmerson then presided. He had already been serving on the Circuit bench for fourteen years. Judge Emmerson's home was in Decatur. In 1867 he was defeated for a justiceship of the State Supreme Court ; was elected a delegate to the constitutional convention of 1870, but died in April of that year before that body had concluded its deliberations.
UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF 1870
The constitution of 1870 retained the popular elective feature of the judiciary and the terms of office of the Supreme and Circuit Court judges as fixed by the constitution of 1848. The number of Supreme Court judges was increased to seven, as at present. In 1873 the state was divided into twenty-seven circuits and in 1877, into thirteen. Under the provisions of the latter year, while the twenty-six judges already in office were retained, an additional judge was authorized for each district to serve two years, making the entire Circuit judiciary to consist of thirty-nine judges. In all this legislation Cook County was in a class by itself, constituting one circuit; the same is true regarding the act of 1897, which increased the number of circuits to seventeen. (exclusive of Cook County), while the number of judges in each circuit remained the same.
The constitution of 1870 provided for the organization of Appellate Courts after 1874. The Legislature established four of these tribunals, Champaign County being in what was denominated the Central Grand Division. Each Appellate Court is held by three Circuit Court judges named by the State Supreme Court, each assignment covering three
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years, and no judge is allowed to receive extra compensation or sit in review of his own rulings or decisions. Two terms are held in each district yearly. The Appellate Courts have no original jurisdiction.
C. B. SMITH
Arthur J. Gallagher, who succeeded Judge Emmerson as circuit judge of the court held in Champaign County, in 1867, held over during the judicial reorganization brought about by the constitution of 1870, and was succeeded in 1873 by Judge C. B. Smith. Judge Smith served the people and the profession so acceptably that he was retained on the Circuit bench for three terms, or eighteen years, and the period of his incumbency was a remarkably busy and important one.
FRANCIS M. WRIGHT
Francis M. Wright, his successor in 1891, had been a resident of Urbana since 1868, much of the time as junior member of the well known law firm of Somers & Wright. Judge Wright was reelected to the Circuit bench in 1897, serving altogether nearly twelve years, dur- ing nine of which he was a member of the Appellate judiciary. He resigned in January, 1903, to accept appointment as judge of the United States Court of Claims, moving to Washington, D. C., to assume that position. There he served until his appointment by President Roose- velt, in 1908, as judge of the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Illinois. Judge Wright died at his home in Urbana, July 15, 1917.
Judge Wright's term of office as Circuit judge was signalized by the completion of the present massive and attractive courthouse, and on the fourth Monday of September, 1901, he opened the fall term of court in the elegant and commodious quarters provided for the accommodation of the judiciary, the juries, officials connected with the legal department and members of the profession. It was certainly a large step from the temporary courthouse of 1836 to the fine structure of 1901.
SOLON PHILBRICK
Solon Philbrick, a lawyer of Champaign City and member of the firm of Gere & Philbrick, succeeded Judge Wright in the Circuit judg- ship by appointment January 20, 1903, and in the following June was elected to that bench, and again elected in June, 1909. Previous to ascending the bench he had been city attorney of Champaign and master in chancery of Champaign County.
Judge Philbrick died in Springfield, April 13, 1914.
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FRANKLIN H. BOGGS
In September, 1914, Franklin H. Boggs, the present incumbent of the bench, was elected to succeed Judge Philbrick. He had been engaged in a leading practice at Urbana, during most of the period as junior member of the firm of Cunningham & Boggs.
HOME JUDICIAL TIMBER
So that the ever increasing importance of Champaign County in the affairs of the Sixth circuit has been recognized for the past twenty-five years by the selection of local professional ability in the construction of judicial timber.
WHAT THE CIRCUIT COURT RECORDS SHOW
The late Judge Cunningham, whose death cut off much interesting material, which would otherwise have appeared in this history, has already recorded the following, in connection with the early formative period of the Circuit Court system in Champaign County: "The records were originally written, not in a book, but, as it would seem, upon loose sheets of paper such as were in use generally at that date. No ruling appears upon the sheets as manufactured, the lines followed having been made by a ruler and lead plummet. The paper is rough and coarse, and has apparently been since bound into book form, with subsequent records.
"The record of the first term is in the handwriting of Judge Harlan, briefly written, but generally in the approved forms of judicial records. The record of the second term is largely in the handwriting of Judge Grant. Subsequent records are partly in the handwriting of the clerk. Mr. Webber, and partly the work of others, presumably of the judges or lawyers for some years, but finally wholly the work of the clerk. Judge Treat wrote much of the record of terms held by him in his well known strong hand. With this judge, in 1841, came a bound book of a better quality of paper ruled in the manufacture. There came also the use of forms in the record which more nearly conform to those in use in later years.
"During the first twenty years of the life of the county, a singular repetition of the same names in the juries called, appears-being mostly the names of those who came early to the county. New names keep dropping in every year. Each day's record is duly signed by the pre-
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siding judge, and as the terms usually lasted but two days, the record must have been actually written up as the business of the court pro- ceeded.
JUDGE HARLAN'S LAST WORK
"The last work done by Judge Harlan in finishing up his long term of service in the county, was the writing of a decree of divorce of nine lines, whereby he forever divorced Robert Prather, the owner of Prather's Ford, from his wife, Letitia. According to modern lights on the divorce question, the merest tyro in law forms would hold that, for all of this decree, Robert and Letitia, long since dead, died in the bonds of holy wedlock.
"Another feature of interest in the record is the small number of indictments found by the grand juries. Not until more than three years of the life of the county was the first indictment returned into court, and only twenty bills were found during the first ten years. These were for offenses most likely to occur in a new country. The offenses charged were: Disturbance of the peace; obstructing a road ; passing counter- feit money ; assaults of various kinds; selling whisky without license; kidnapping ; larceny, and carrying deadly weapons. Only two convic- tions followed."
PROBATE JUDGES
The continuity of the county judiciary inferior to the Circuit Court, is carried along through the Probate and County systems, with the justices of the peace as useful and, at times, very busy auxiliaries ; in fact, under the constitution of 1818 and for thirty years thereafter, matters usually classed as probate and those now assigned to justices of the peace, were under the jurisdiction of what were denominated probate justices of the peace, or as they were more generally known probate judges. Moses Thomas, the first probate judge, served from 1833 to 1837, when John B. Thomas was elected. He was followed by M. W. Busey in 1839, John Brownfield in 1841, Daniel T. Porter in 1843 and Archa Campbell, in 1848.
JOHN BROWNFIELD
Among the best known of these officials were John Brownfield and Archa Campbell. The Brownfield family had moved from Kentucky in October, 1832, and settled near the old Fort Clark road in the Big Grove section. John Brownfield, the head of the family, was then a
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man about forty-seven years of age, and a blacksmith. He at once built a horse grist mill near his home, which became a most popular institution with the neighborhood settlers. A few years afterward he erected a saw and a grist mill, operated by the creek about three miles below Urbana. Mr. Brownfield was very useful and popular, both by virtue of his sound abilities and his personal relations. He had married a sister of James Clements, another leading settler, and he himself raised thirteen children, some of whom married into leading families of the county.
SETTLED OUT OF COURT
Mr. Brownfield died in July, 1863, and the following is told as to his native shrewdness, and his aptitude for settling cases out of court: "Born and reared at a time and in a section of the country, when and where educational facilities were out of the question, he was conspicuous for his lack of book learning, and as conspicuous for his strong common sense, which never deserted him in any emergency. Although without a knowledge of the world beyond his limited line of observation, he was too shrewd and alert to be overreached by the most casuistic of sharpers. He would have proven himself equal to the ingenuousness of any of the modern confidence men, had they visited him in that day. His shrewd- ness in settling by the most peaccable of measures a threatened lawsuit well illustrates his aptness in dealing with men. In his water mill above spoken of, he made use of a wheel fashioned after one which somebody had patented, without thinking of infringing on any one's rights, others of the same pattern being in use in the neighborhood. An agent of the patentee came through the country looking after infringers upon his patent. He came to Urbana one day, put up his team and enquired for Mr. Brownfield's mill and residence, and was told he was in town. The two soon met and the stranger made known his business. He said he was informed that Mr. B. had in use one of his patent wheels-that he had already settled like infringements on his letters- patent with so-and-so, and was disposed to settle with him without suit. Mr. Brownfield said if he had infringed upon the rights of anyone he was willing to pay, but from the stranger's description of his wheel he doubted if his own wheel was any infringement. Ile invited the claimant to go with him to his mill and examine for himself. It was then near noon, and it was agreed that the two should meet soon after dinner and together go to the mill, three miles away. After his dinner the stranger drove out with a spirited team for Mr. Brownfield to pilot him to the mill, but he could not be found. After some further search
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