USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume II > Part 29
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On the 15th of June. 1894. Charles C. Carnahan was united in marriage to Miss Katherine A. Hawkes, and from their union has been born one daughter, Madeleine R. Mr. Carnahan is a Mason of high standing, being a member of the Oriental Consistory thirty- second degree, and of Medinah Temple. He is also identified with the Knights of Pythias and the National Union.
In the field of his profession Mr. Carnahan is especially known Vol. II-19
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for his large corporation practice. On account of his thorough legal knowledge in this specialty, he is identified with a number of import- ant corporations, partly in a legal and partly in a managerial capacity. It should be needless to add, in view of the above statement of facts, that Mr. Carnahan is a busy, useful citizen, and among the most rapid progressionists of his profession in Chicago.
Fred Holmes Atwood, senior member of the firm of Atwood, Pease & Loucks, has earned the reputation of being one of the most
FRED H. successful trial lawyers at the Chicago bar, the col-
ATWOOD. lective business of the copartnership being largely
identified with the litigation incident to the progress of the lumber interests of the city. For many years he was also one of the most prominent Democrats of this section, but abandoned that party on the financial issues of 1896 and has since been an earnest supporter of Republican principles. His political record is indicative of his radicalism and independence, and his determination to abide by principles which he believes to be sound at the root, irrespective of where such a course may lead him as to party, civic or religious organizations of his fellows.
Fred H. Atwood was born on a farm in Leroy township, Cal- houn county, Michigan, on the 4th of February, 1863, being a son of Ephraim and Samantha J. (Holmes) Atwood, natives respect- ively, of Pennsylvania and of his own native county. They still reside in that section of Michigan, where they are accounted as among its most substantial, respected and influential members of the community. The father, a lifelong agriculturist, was born in 1838, his wife being his junior by three years. Through the maternal line Mr. Atwood comes of the same family of which Justice Holmes, of the United States supreme court, is a representative.
Mr. Atwood's boyhood years were passed on the home farm in Calhoun county, and as an attendant of the district school at West Leroy, Michigan. Later he attended the college at Battle Creek, that state, and in 1881 entered the University of Michigan as a law student. After finishing a three years' course he secured his regular professional degree, but decided to practice his profession in Chicago, thus engaging alone until 1887. For the succeeding decade he was a member of the firm of Cruikshank and Atwood, and since then of the firms of Atwood and Pease, and Atwood, Pease and Loucks
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(as at present). Among the leading cases with which Mr. Atwood has been individually identified may be mentioned two of special note-those of Annis versus The West Chicago Railway Company, which was decided by the supreme court of Illinois in favor of the plaintiff (165 Illinois Reports) and R. G. Dun versus The Lumber- men's Credit Association. The latter case is now pending in the United States supreme court. Mr. Atwood's success is largely due not only to his effectiveness as a pleader before court and jury, but to the persistency with which he follows up any matter entrusted to him, and he is especially strong in corporation and commercial litigation.
As stated, Mr. Atwood was long a prominent Democrat, being chosen as a presidential elector from Illinois by that party in 1892. Since 1896 he has been a Republican, with independent proclivities. He is a member of the Chicago Bar Association, and a Mason of high rank, in the fraternity mentioned being identified with Apollo Commandery No. I, K. T. He is prominently identified with the Methodist Episcopal church and is president of the board of trustees of the Evanston Avenue church. In 1885 Mr. Atwood was united in marriage with Miss Minnie P. Best, of Vicksburg, Michigan, and they have become the parents of Ivan J. B., Ephraim H. and Lenna Gertrude Atwood. An able lawyer, a faithful husband and father, a companionable and popular man, and a citizen of broad usefulness -what more can be said in commendation of the life record of an American ?
Born of humble parentage on an obscure Minnesota farm, less than thirty years ago, William Samuel Kies, by sheer determination,
WILLIAM S. ability and force of character, has risen to a very
high position-that of general attorney in the legal
KIES. department of one of the greatest railway systems in the world. As a trial lawyer in the domain of corporation litiga- tion he has few superiors at the local bar, and in view of his com- paratively short experience as a practicing attorney his progress and standing are somewhat phenomenal. Mr. Kies' place of birth was a farm near Mapleton, Minnesota, and his birthday December 2, 1877. his parents being Christian L. and Bertha A. (Steeps) Kies. His father, a native of Schondorf, Wurtemberg, came to the United States alone at the age of sixteen years, and his death occurred at
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Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1894. His mother was born on a farm in Winnebago county in 1847, and her death occurred in the same city two years after that of her husband.
Mr. Kies, the only child of this union, was educated at the Osh- kosh schools. After graduating from the high school, although only seventeen years of age, he secured the principalship of the public schools at Fredonia, Wisconsin, serving thus for the school year IS94-5, and holding the same position at the head of the Grafton (Wis. ) schools in 1895-6. In the latter year he entered the University of Wisconsin, at Madison, finishing the regular four years' course in the classics in three years and receiving the prescribed degree of B. L. But finding his longing for a practical, working education unsat- isfied, he entered with his usual vim and determination into the study of the law, and made such rapid and satisfactory progress that he was again able to master a regular course of three years in two, graduating from the law school in 1901 with LL. B. This rapid progress at the Wisconsin State University was the more remarkable in view of the fact that Mr. Kies had been supporting himself since he was fourteen years of age; and his case is another illustration of where necessity has proven the best spur to energies and abilities of a high order, and in which the pressure of circumstances far from discouraging the brave and ardent man has served only to push him on to greater accomplishment. But in order that what the world calls adverse circumstances shall have this inspiring effect the char- acter must be far above the normal in elastic strength and toughness of fiber. These qualities William Kies possessed and evinced them in a striking manner from the time he earned his first money as an Oshkosh newspaper delivery boy, at a dollar and a half a week, until he had attained an assured standing in his profession-and even then, and now, they are his in a more mature and massive measure.
While at the University of Wisconsin he earned his way by acting as business manager of the Daily Cardinal, the official organ of the university, and of the Wisconsin Alumni Magazine, as well as by the publication for two years of the Wisconsin Municipalities. He took high honors in his course, being intercollegiate debater, and, at the time of his graduation, was the orator of his class. Admitted to the Wisconsin bar in 1901, in August of that year he came to Chicago, and for a short time was in the law office of Peck, Miller
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and Starr. Subsequently, until May 1, 1903, he was connected with the legal department of the Chicago City Railway Company, under John F. Smulski, and in this connection was regarded as one of the most efficient defenders of the city's interests ever associated with that department. His ability as a trial lawyer especially attracted the attention of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company, and resulted in his resignation of his position in the city attorney's office April 1, 1905, and accepting the office of general attorney for the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company. In this position he is consulting attorney for the claim department and trial attorney for the railroad, also having charge of all the company's attorneys in the state of Illinois. He had entire charge of the preparation of the suit, extending over a year, in the big Northwestern Deport Condemnation case, with N. G. Moore and F. H. Scott as special counsel. This was perhaps the most important condemnation case ever tried in Cook county and the longest in the United States. The trial lasted seven months, and $5,000,000 worth of property between Clinton, Canal, Madison and Kinzie streets was involved. In three years to date Mr. Kies has not lost a case for the railroad company.
Mr. Kies is a member of the American Bar Association, the Chi- cago Bar Association, the Illinois Bar Association, and the Chicago Law Institute, and stands high personally and professionally among his fellow attorneys. In politics he is an earnest Republican and has taken an active part in the affairs of the party since 1900, during that year being especially prominent in the Mckinley campaign through- out Wisconsin. Since that time he has been in urgent demand as a campaign speaker, his style of delivery being easy and attractive. and the subject matter of his speeches clearly, pithily and eloquently pre- sented.
On the 12th of July, 1905, Mr. Kies was united in mariage to Miss Mabel P. Best, of Chicago, daughter of George W. and Bertha D. Best, and to their union was born Margaret Bertha Kies, November II, 1906. Mr. Kies is a member of the Methodist church, a Master Mason and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Kappa Sigma fraternities. He is also a member of the Union League, Chicago Athletic, Germania and Hamilton clubs. To his substantial and bril- liant traits as a lawyer, his stanch character as a man, he is possessed of the sociable and attractive qualities of the cultured gentleman, which
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union of characteristics has raised him to his present enviable position as a lawyer and a citizen.
James Joseph Barbour, who has won a leading place at the Chi- cago bar, is a native of Hartford, Connecticut, born on the 28th of
December, 1869, and is therefore one of the young-
JAMES J. BARBOUR.
est of the prominent members of the bar. His par- ents were Rev. H. H. and Frances E. Barbour, and the preference of the son for a professional career was something of a family trait. In pursuance of his father's pastoral duties the fam- ily removed to Newark, New Jersey, where, until 1886, James J. received his education through the public and high schools. The combination of practical with literary and oratorical talents inclined him, at quite an early age, to the province of the law as the field of his life work. His educational training for the practice of his profes- sion was received at the Chicago College of Law in 1889-92.
Upon his admission to the bar in 1891 at the age of twenty-one, and prior to the completion of his full collegiate course, Mr. Bar- bour had become attorney for the Commercial National Bank of Chi- cago and continued as such until the death of its president, Henry F. Eames, in 1897. In 1894 he formed a partnership with Joseph A. Sleeper, which was dissolved upon the retirement of the latter from practice, since which time Mr. Barbour has been engaged alone in private and official litigation. Mr. Barbour's talents and success as a trial lawyer were recognized by his Republican associates when, in 1904, he was appointed assistant state's attorney by Charles S. De- neen, and later under the administration of John J. Healy, became first assistant.
Within the past few years Mr. Barbour has been the attorney of a number of the most noted cases which have engaged the attention of the public. He prosecuted Inga Hanson, who was convicted of perjury in her suit for damages against the City Railway Company. He was also in charge of the proceedings against George S. McRey- nolds, for fradulent transfer and sale of grain covered by warehouse receipts held, by Chicago banks to the amount of over $500,000, and of the suit against William Eugene Brown, the Chicago lawyer, con- victed of subornation of perjury and disbarred from practice, for fraudulently obtaining three thousand dollars from the American Trust and Savings Bank. The prosecution of William J. Davis for
Janeog. Barbour
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manslaughter, in connection with the Iroquois theater fire, the suit being finally tried at Danville, Illinois, and resulting in the discharge of the defendant by the court on technical grounds, was in the hands of Mr. Barbour, as were also the conspiracy cases against John M. Collins, chief of police, and others, for levying campaign assess- ments against police officers. In the summer of 1906 he assisted Judge Harry Olson in the prosecution of Paul O. Stensland and others for embezzlements from the Milwaukee Avenue State Bank. Within the past three years he has tried over fifty murder cases. In the case of People versus McEwen he removed the Lipsey habeas cor- pus case from the superior court of Cook county to the supreme court by certiorari, and there obtained a ruling that nisi prius courts were without jurisdiction to review final judgments in criminal cases by writs of habeus corpus.
On September 1, 1891, Mr. Barbour was united in marriage to Miss Lillian Clayton, their children being Justin F., Heman H. and Elizabeth.
In is an especial pleasure for the editor of a work devoted to the history of Chicago and to a delineation of the citizens who have as-
HOBART P.
sisted in its progress, to be able to present the sub-
YOUNG. stantial record of a native son, whose parents were.
moreover, of the true pioneer stock who accom- plished their part in starting the city on its great journey of adven- ture and accomplishment. Hobart P. Young, assistant state's at- torney of Cook county, is a member of the law firm of Alden, Latham and Young. Born in this city, March 31, 1875, he is the son of George W. and Mary (McDonough) Young. His father was born in Utica, New York, in 1843, and in 1852 came to Chicago, where his future wife was born four years before. For a number of years prior to the great fire of 1871, George W. Young was engaged in the hardware business, but is best remembered by Chicagoans for his prominent connection with the railway postal service. From 1871 until his death, January 22, 1907. he was engaged in that service, in charge of the cars running over the Chicago & Northwestern Rail- way system, and the remarkable development in equipment and oper- ation of that branch of the general service came under his direct su- pervision and was largely due to his efforts and intelligent faithful- ness. To this work he gave the best years of his life and was ac-
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counted one of the most honorable men ever connected with the rail- way postal service. The mother of Hobart P. Young is now one of the earliest pioneers living in Chicago, her birth occurring in 1848.
Mr. Young received his primary education in the public schools of Chicago, and his higher literary training at St. Ignatius College, from which, in 1904, he was graduated with the degree of A. B. He immediately entered the law department of the Northwestern Uni- versity, and after a two-years' course therein obtained his LL. B. in 1906, since which he has been engaged in general and official prac- tice. He received the appointment of assistant state's attorney in February, 1906, and has successfully conducted a number of import- ant cases. Among others were the People of Illinois versus the Illi- nois Steel Company, which involves one hundred and eighty-seven acres of land valued by experts at $1,250,000; the People versus John A. Cooke and the People versus Abner Smith. The latter case, which involved malfeasance in office, was the first instance in the history of Cook county in which a judge has been found guilty.
Mr. Young is an active member of the Chicago Bar Association and Legal Club, serving as president of the latter in 1905-06. He is an able and popular young lawyer, and is a welcome member of such clubs as the Chicago Athletic, Glen View Country and Colonial. Unmarried, his residence is still with his mother at the comfortable family home in Chicago, which is a favorite gathering place of not only the younger generation who live in the future, but of many of the city's pioneers who may be pardoned for their somewhat proud review of the past.
Charles W. Vail, clerk of the superior court, one of the old-time residents of the Thirty-second ward and prominent for many years
CHARLES W. in its political affairs, is a native of Fairbury, Illi-
VAIL. nois, where his early schooling was obtained. His business course in the Metropolitan Business Col- lege of this city, which he took immediately upon his coming to Chi- cago, fitted him above the average capacity for the business details of commercial life, and for such details as now devolve upon him in the public position which he now holds. An extended experience in the real estate business and confidence in his judgment have re- sulted in his being sought as appraiser and arbitrator in many large realty transactions in this city and elsewhere.
Chaswail
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In the many years in which his position upon the Cook county central committee of the Republican party has kept him in touch with and in the leadership of political affairs of the Thirty-second ward and the Town of Lake he has acquired and has held as close personal friends, it can safely be said, more stanch supporters than any other man who has ever lived in the ward. "Once a friend, al- ways a friend," can be said not only of Mr. Vail himself, but like- wise of nearly all who, time and again, have been satisfied to share with him defeat, if defeat came, and whom he lias never overlooked in his hard-earned successes and his well-deserved victories.
Starting out in his political activities with an unusual capacity, an aptitude for organization, and with the ability to use forces and men thus organized effectively, and with innate principles and char- acter to dictate and permit only legitimate and honorable courses of action, he has grappled to himself the friends acquired with "hooks of steel," and has added new ones by the score as time has progressed. So true has this been that hardly a man lives in the Thirty-second ward who does not claim "Charley Vail" as his personal friend, however much they may differ politically or otherwise. A happy optimism and an undaunted persistency, which would recognize in defeat only another stepping stone to success, have characterized every step of his political activity, and have enabled him to encour- age and retain his loyal and continually increasing following through any and all reverses. Success with him has been synonymous with struggle at every step of the way. Nothing of victory has come easy as it does to many less worthy, or has been thrust upon him, and vic- tory has never meant to him simply personal success. He has made it mean, likewise, success for his friends. The struggles they have shared with him he has rewarded, principal and interest, by making them participants in his own well being.
When political life assumed for him a wider field, and he was awarded the Town of Lake representation upon the Republican county ticket, in the nomination for the responsible office of clerk of the superior court, results showed that his service to the party had been recognized and his popularity had established itself on a firm founda- tion far outside the boundaries of his own representative district ; for with unusually strong entries for public suffrage in the cam- paign he led the whole field and topped the ticket with the largest
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vote received by any candidate. He has now become thoroughly identified with, and a potent factor in, the party councils of the city. A long-time adherent of Governor Deneen, he is now recognized as his personal lieutenant and representative for the entire southwest array of wards, and his ability as a manager to the county campaigns now puts him at the head of many of the active committees of the county organization ; never as a figure-head, always as the field officer.
If fealty to party, faithful adherence to, and energetic promotion of, Republican principles, loyalty to political friends, untiring per- sonal effort, unwavering fidelity to the fulfilment of every trust re- posed in him, rigid economy and unimpeachable integrity, in the handling of public funds appertaining to his office, a wise and effi- cient administration of all the affairs of that office and a capable application and devotion of all his abilities in the service of the people constitute any just foundation of merit, then the political future ought to hold much good in store for Charles W. Vail.
Mr. Vail has long been one of the most active members of the executive committee of the Cook county central Republican com- mittee, and represents the Third congressional district upon the Re- publican state central committee. He is connected with the Chicago Association of Commerce and is president of the Prairie State Coal and Coke Company. He is a member of the Hamilton Club, is a thirty-second degree Mason, and is identified with many fraternal organizations, including the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the North American Union and the "Charles W. Vail Camp" of Modern Woodmen of America.
He was married in 1896 to Miss Clara I. Barton, and has three children, Edna, Charles W. Jr., and Marjorie.
Harry. D. Irwin, junior member of the well-known firm of Hoyne, O'Connor and Irwin, and a rising lawyer of the Chicago bar, is a native of Ohio, born at Scioto Furnace, on the 20th
HARRY D. IRWIN.
of February, 1865. The son of Nathan H. and Rachel (Keeran) Irwin, his parents were both na- tives of the Buckeye state, and his early years were passed amid the iron industries of his native locality, his father being connected with various furnaces of southern Ohio. His father was born at New- ark, Ohio, in 1831, and his mother at Utica, that state, five years later. In 1875 the family removed from Ohio to the state of Illi-
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Edwarda . C. Higgins
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nois, where for several years the elder Irwin was engaged in farm- ing, dying in 1883 at West York, Illinois; the mother resides with her daughter at Terre Haute, Indiana.
The public school systems of Ohio and Illinois furnished Mr. Ir- win with his elementary education, and in 1889 he entered the law department of the University of Michigan, and, while pursuing his professional studies, accomplished considerable special work in the literary line. Prior to his entrance to the university he had studied law for a year in the office of Cullop and Shaw, one of the leading firms of Vincennes and southern Indiana ; the result was that he had made such progress as to be able to complete his course in the law school by 1891. In June of that year Mr. Irwin was admitted to both the Michigan and Illinois bars, and in September located in Chicago as an employee of the firm of Hoyne, Follansbee and O'Con- nor. That co-partnership was dissolved in 1898, and, with the ad- mission of Maclay Hoyne, son of Thomas M. Hoyne, the style be- came Hoyne, O'Connor and Hoyne, of which firm Mr. Irwin became a partner in 1900. On the first of January, 1907, Maclay Hoyne sev- ered his connection with it, and since then the firm has been known as Hoyne, O'Connor and Irwin.
Mr. Irwin's practice, in connection with the firm mentioned, is of a general nature, and has won him a substantial reputation. He is a member of the Chicago Bar Association, the Law Institute and the Legal Club, of which he was president in 1905, and the Masonic fra- ternity, being identified with the Blue Lodge and Chapter. In poli- ยท tics he is a Republican, but has not been active in any field outside that of his profession. Mr. Irwin was married, in June, 1895. to Miss Alice E. Prevo, of West York, Illinois, and to their union have been born four daughters, Helen, Marian, Louise and Emily.
Edward C. Higgins is a well-known educator in the legal field and enjoys well merited recognition as one of the most capable and
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