History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 121

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340

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Both these terms of the Circuit Court of Cook County in 1835, were held in the First Presbyterian church, then situated north of what is now the Sher- man House, and fronting on Clark Street. The spring term of 1836 was held by Judge Ford in the same building, and extended from May 23 to June 4. There were two hundred and thirty civil cases, twenty-one criminal and thirteen chancery. Most of the people's cases were for constructive contempt through non-at- tendance as jurors. The two most important of them were for assault with intent to kill and both culprits were sent to the penitentiary, the first of a long and ever-widening band of convicts on that charge from Chicago. The most important civil suit was, perhaps, that of Harrington 7s. Hubbard, the first land case in Cook County which was decided in favor of the de- fendant but on appeal to the Supreme Court that decis- ion was reversed the ensuing winter at Vandalia.

The fall term of 1836 was held by the same Judge, and in the same building. In addressing the Grand Jury, James Grant, prosecuting attorney, dwelt specific- ally on the duty they owed the public in relation to trespassers upon the canal lands. The court re-enforced his remarks by reminding them that it was to these lands the public must look for the completion of the canal ; and every tree stolen detracted from its value. Both speeches help to show how paramount in interest at that time to the people of Chicago was the longed- for canal and all its belongings. Several rogues were sent to the penitentiary at Alton as a result of this term

of court; and a score or more were indicted for tres- passing on the canal lands; but a large part of the court business remained unfinished, and the need of additional judicial facilities, through new courts or more terms of the Circuit Court, became apparent.

Among the most important of the civil cases tried at the fall term in 1836, was what is popularly known as the Beaubien land claim, which Judge Ford decided fa- vorably to claimant. This decision was sustained by the Supreme Court of the State, but was reversed in 1839 by the Supreme Court of the United States. See Beaubien claim.

THE CHICAGO. BAR AT THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CITY .- As at the close of 1834 Cook County was about to be transferred from the Fifth to the Sixth Cir- cuit, so now before the spring term of 1837, it became a part of the Seventh Circuit, to which amid frequent changes and numerous additions to the circuits in the State, it ever afterward belonged, until by the Constitu- tion of 1870, the County of Cook was made one judicial circuit. A month after the establishment of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, Chicago was granted its charter of in- corporation as a city, which is therefore appropriately made an era in the history of its Bench and Bar. Meanwhile the membership of the Chicago Bar had more than doubled, and biographical sketches of the accessions since the close of 1834, now deceased or de- parted from Chicago, are here subjoined.

· ROYAL STEWART is on record as admitted to the Bar in Illinois January 8, 1835 ; and is found adver- tised as an attorney at Chicago on June S, of the same year. How much longer he remained a resident is not clear, but his name disappears from the local records.

In 1841, however, he was residing at Syracuse, N. Y., as may be learned from 2 Scam.

WILLIAM H. BROWN, a lawyer and distinguished citizen, is treated elsewhere, as after his arrival in Chi- cago he became more distinguished as a banker.

JAMES CURTISS, more of a politician than a lawyer, and twice Mayor, will be found mentioned in the politi- cal chapter.

HANS CROCKER arrived in Chicago in 1834, and studied law for a time in the office of Collins & Caton. In 1836, he removed to Milwaukee, where he has since attained some prominence as a lawyer,* but he was not admitted to practice while here, and does not properly belong to the Bar of Chicago.

WILLIAM STUART, though not admitted to the Bar in Illinois until July 11, 1837, advertised as attorney and land agent as early as December 5, 1835. He never practiced much at the Bar, being at first a real estate man, and then a journalist. In August, 1836, he became partner of James Curtiss, and was appointed Town .It- torney for a short time during the absence of James H. Collins. Curtiss & Stuart dissolved in October, 1837, and Mr. Stuart was publisher and editor of the Chicago American in 1839. He was appointed Postmaster by Harrison in 1841, and held that office until the close of the presidential term in March, 1845. In May of that year he formed a partnership with Charles H. Larrabee, but in 1846 he left Chicago for Binghamton, N. Y., where he also edited a newspaper and became twice Postmaster, and died a few years since.

EBENEZER PECK was born in Portland, Me., May 22, 1 So5, but received his earliest education at Peacham, V't. While yet a lad, his parents removed to Canada, and some years later young Peck began the study of low in Montreal, where also he first practiced the profession. About 1826 he was married to Miss Caroline 1. Walker,

* A. T. Andreas's History of Milwaukee, 1881, page 1585.

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THE BENCH AND BAR.

at Peacham, Vt. In 1833 he rose to the dignity of King's Counsel for a district in Canada East, and was elected to the provincial Parliament on the Reform ticket. His party began to drift toward rebellion, and Counselor Peck removed to Chicago, where he arrived in the sum- mer of 1835. About the middle of October, he is found associated with J. D. Caton, in the case of Geddis vs. Kercheval. " He made his mark at once," says Caton. " He showed that his study of the law had been syste- matic, while he evinced all the resources of tact, and sagacity and quickness of apprehension, so important in the successful trial of a cause before a jury. His ad-

EBENEZER PECK.

dress to the jury was forcible, and at times eloquent." From the first he took an active interest in politics, and was induced by Mr. Caton to join the Democratic party. October 28 he was appointed Town Clerk, and the en- suing month was chosen delegate to the first State Con- vention, which was held at Vandalia December 7, and at which the future Senator Douglas first began to at- tract public attention. Before leaving the capital, he was admitted to the Bar of Illinois, December 14. In the summer of 1836, he resigned the clerkship of the town, and a few months later became prominent in the movement for a city charter. At the meeting of Novem- ber 25. he was appointed chairman of the committee to draft it, and December 9 reported the instrument, which with slight modifications was finally adopted by the Board of Town Trustees, and passed by the Legislature, March 4. 1837, as the charter of the future metropolis of the Northwest. Of this he and Caton have always been regarded the principal authors. In 1837. on the dissolution of the house of Jones, Clark & Co., MIr. Peck became a member of the succeeding firms of Jones, King & Co., and W. 11. Stow & Co., iron found- ers. He was chosen one of the board of commission-

ers under the State internal improvement act of 1837. In 1838 he was elected from this Senatorial District to fill the unexpired term of Peter Pruyne, deceased, but resigned before the close of the term and became clerk In the of the internal improvement board in 1839. suspension of public improvements, which soon supervened, his position was neither exhaustive nor remunerative, and he was again elected to the Legislature in 1840, this time as representative. On the re-organization of the State judiciary by the General Assembly February 15, 1841, he was chosen clerk by the Supreme Court some time before May 19. In 1846 he formed a partnership with James A. Mc- Dougall, of Chicago, previously of Jacksonville, and later Attorney-General of the State, which continued as McDougall & Peck until the former went to Califor- nia in 1849, when Peck became associated with Charles B. Hosmer. Meanwhile he had gone out of office as clerk of the Supreme Court when it was legislated out of existence by the adoption of the new constitution March 6, 1848. Charles Gilman, reporter of the Su- preme Court, died July 24, 1849, and Mr. Peck was chosen to that office by the new court, and from that time the volumes were called Illinois Reports. His first appeared in 1850, and he numbered it XI, thus leaving room for the preceding ten-Breese's one, Scam- mon's four and Gilman's five. His own series closed with Volume XXX, in 1863. About 1850 he became interested in the new Democratic journal known as the Argus, the business connection being in the name of his eldest son, W. W. In 1853 his law firm became Peck. Hosmer & Wright, by the accession of Edward Wright, son-in-law of the senior member. In the mem- orable new departure of the Democratic party for the enlargement of the slave area, in 1853, by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, established by their niore prudent fathers a generation before, Mr. Peck aban- doned his old party associations. In 1856 he became one of the ex-Democratic founders in Illinois of the party which has since become historic under the name of Republican. In the famous political debate between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858 Mr. Peck was deeply in- terested, and was elected on the new ticket as one of the four representatives of Cook County in the twenty- first General Assembly, where he helped, by his expe- rience and management, to establish the Republican party on a solid foundation in the State. In 1860 he Jabored for its success in the wider field of national politics. In April, 1863, he resigned as reporter to the Supreme Court of Illinois, and was appointed one of the judges of the Court of Claims at Washington by President Lincoln, whose friendship and intimacy he enjoyed and labored to repay by faithful advice and de- voted service. In the heavy burdens of head and heart which fell to the President's lot he is known to have sought and valued the counsels of Judge l'eck. whose experience as a politician specially commended his views. For many years there were but few men in Illinois who wielded a more extensive or powerful in- fluence in political circles, and few were more active or adroit partisans, le heldl the judgeship under the successive administrations of Johnson and Grant, re- tiring in 1875 on full pay, at the age of seventy, when he returned to Chicago in broken health. His oldest son W. W., born in 1831, died at Washington, a Captain in the regular army, in 1862. Two years after the re- turn to Chicago, the mother died, in 1877. The Judge survived his wife some four years. He died May 25. ISSt, and was buried two days later from U'nity church. Three children survived him-Charles F., bred a lawyer.

---

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HISTORY OF CHICAGO.

and admitted to the Bar of Illinois January 7, 1857, who removed to Washington about 1864. and became a member of the law firm of Hughes, Denver & Peck; Mrs. Edward Wright, and Mrs. Perry Trumbull, an adopted daughter. At the memorial meeting of the Bar, convened May 26, and adjourned to the 30th, when they again assembled, speeches were made by several of the Judge's late associates, from which are excerpted the following estimates of his character and powers :

"It could be truthfully said of Judge Peck," re- marked Judge Drummond, "that he was an honest, self-reliant man, whose judgment and counsel went rarely astray." "A man," said B. C. Cook, chairman of committee on resolutions, "of earnest convictions and had the courage of his convictions, * * *

a judge whose decisions will stand as clear, profound, and faithful expositions of the law. * * He has * left the impress of his character upon the eventful time in which he lived. His influence has been marked and bene- ficial in the history of the city, the State and the Nation."

* * * "It was fortunate," says Judge Caton, "that he was rarely wrong. Whenever his mind was fully made up on any subject, I never knew him to change it, and this whether it were on a question of law or ethics, the use of a word or the structure of a sentence. * *

* It was not obstinacy, for he was anxious to

be convinced and to agree with us. It was simply con- viction, from which he would not be moved to oblige anybody." "Judge Peck," says Mr. Ashton, "was no ordinary man. As a lawyer and judge he had few superiors; as an adviser and counselor I doubt if he had his superior. He was not a 'case lawyer,' although when inclined, he was a fine advocate. He was a lawyer in the fullest sense of the term. * * He * always reached his conclusions by analysis and from * * He disliked the drudgery and routine of the office, but when necessary he could ac- principle. * complish as much labor in a short time as any man I ever knew." " He was," said Judge Trumbull, "out- spoken in his opinions, and never pretended what he was not. With hypocrisy, shams and deceit he had no patience. He was a man of great kindness of heart, full of sympathy and hospitality. *

* * His family circle was one of the happiest and brightest in which it was ever my privilege to mingle. Even in later life, when pain and sorrow came, and his physical system was broken by disease, his hope and cheerfulness did not forsake him. * *

* He lived a pure life, was kind, true and faithful in all its relations, and died an honest man."

ALONZO HUNTINGTON was born in Shaftsbury, Vt., September 1, 1805. He was a grandson of Amos Hunt- ington, a Captain in the Revolutionary War, and on his mother's side a grand-nephew of Governor Galusha, of Vermont. After receiving his early education in the schools of his native State, he removed, in early man- hood, to western New York, where he worked some years at his trade of mason, and afterward studied law under the Hon. I. T. Hatch, of Buffalo. In 1833, he returned to Vermont, where he married Patience Lorain Dyer, a native of Clarendon, Rutland County, and a sister of the well-known Dr. Charles V. Dyer, of Chi- cago. For two years after his marriage hie resided in Wayne County, N. Y., of which Lyons is the county- seat, when he removed to Chicago in the fall of 1835. He was chosen State's Attorney for the Seventh Circuit in 1837, his competitor. Albert (. Leary, a member of the Bar, being rejected by a majority of the General Assembly, bccause he was himself a member of that

body. In 1839, Mr. Huntington was again chosen State's Attorney. Admitted to the Bar in New York. he is not found enrolled on the list of the Supreme Court of Illinois until January 14, 1840. The most remarka- ble criminal case prosecuted by him was the People as. John Stone, for the murder of Mrs. Lucretia Thomp- son, at the spring term in 1840, and excited some rlie-

A Huntington

torical but undeserved animadversion as a prosecutor of the Press, for performing under the orders of the court the perfunctory duty of entering suit against the editor of the American for contempt. At the expiration of his second term in 1841, he resumed the practice of the profession as a member of the Chicago Bar. As prose- cutor and advocate he was recognized as of great in- dustry rather than great talents, of conscientious fidelity to the interests of his clients rather than oratorical abil- ity, and of unquestioned integrity rather than showy pretension or display of legal lore. In his official posi- tion he was fairly successful, especially during his second term. To his neighbors and acquaintances he was cor- dial; to his family, kind, generous and self-sacrificing. To stand by his own was the cardinal principle of his life, and in the varied relations of son, brother, husband and father he has seldom been surpassed. He died at his home in Chicago, November 17, 1881, aged seventy- six years. His wife had preceded him twenty years. having died October 23, 1861, aged sixty. They had six children, of whom only two, a son and a daughter. survive. Henry Alonzo Huntington, the son, was born in Chicago, March 23, 1840, served as an officer in the Fourth United States Artillery in the Rebellion, and is

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now better known as Major Huntington, of the editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune. The daughter, Frances, born in Chicago October 23, 1844, is the wife of Ben- jamin M. Wilson, of the law firm of Wilson & Collier, of this city.

JONATHAN YOUNG SCAMMON, also a member of the early Bar of Chicago, being admitted December 7, 1835, is sketched in the field of perhaps his greater fame as an early banker.

JOSEPH N. BALESTIER was born in 1815 at Brattle- boro, Vt., whence he emigrated to Chicago some time in 1835. He soon formed a partnership with Thomas R. Hubbard, and the firm is found advertising " money to loan " in the Chicago American of December 5, of that year. Both were recognized as lawyers though neither seems to have taken the trouble to obtain a license to practice in Illinois. In 1836, Mr. Balestier "realized $500 per day," says Harriett Martineau, "by merely making out titles to land."* Hubbard & Balestier ad- vertised as a firm as late as August 16, 1837, and both appear in the reprinted " directory of 1839." January 21, 1840, Mr. Balestier delivered before the Lyceum his now celebrated lecture " The Annals of Chicago.". re- printed in 1876, with an introduction by himself, as No. I of the Fergus Historical Series. On or before Sep- tember 25. 1840, he formed a new partnership with E. Webster Evans, a young lawyer, just arrived from the East. But within a year, September 23, 1841, we find Mr. Balestier advertised as a lawyer at No. 58 Wall Street, New York ; and his Introduction to the Annals, already referred to, is dated Brattleboro, Vt., January 1,. 1876, where he now resides.

THOMAS R. HUBBARD went to New York about 1839, and became secretary to a banker.

GEORGE ANSON OLIVER BEAUMONT was born in Columbia, Tolland Co., Conn., about 1811. Reach- ing early manhood, he studied law at the New Haven law school, where he received a diploma, equivalent to a license to practice in the courts of the State. In 1836, accompanied by his mother, widowed in his in- fancy, he removed to Chicago. He formed a partner- ship with Mark Skinner August 6. 1836, and the firm held a respectable rank in the profession. Mr. Beau- mont was not enrolled on the Supreme Court list as a licensed lawyer until December 11, 1839, though prob- ably admitted to the Bar here as early as 1836. In 1842 he was appointed Commissioner in Bankruptcy for Cook County. On February 3, 1842, before the Young Men's Association, he delivered a lecture on " American Literature." In the spring of 1844 his health became impaired, and Mr. Skinner being appointed United States District Attorney, the firm was dissolved that summer. In the ensuing spring Mr. Beaumont was taken by his mother to the home of his youth, but the change did not avail, and he died of softening of the brain, December 18, 1845. He was a tall, slim man, of delicate organization, unfortunately subject from his youth to nervous disorders, which despite a fair intel- lect, an excellent education and industrious habits, re- tarded his professional progress; and although Mr. Beaumont attained respectable rank in the carly Bar of Chicago, he made no permanent impression on the pub- lic mind, and his existence is almost forgotten.

FISHER AMES HARDING, a native of Rhode Island, where he was born about 1812, and a graduate of Brown University made a brief sojourn in Chicago as a lawyer, though not on record as admitted to the Bar in Illinois. He is first mentioned here as disputant before the Ly- ceum, February 20, 1836, and next, as partner of Henry

Moore, March 12, of the same year. Moore & Hard- ing dissolved May 19, 1837, and Mr. Harding became associated with Fletcher Webster. The firm of Webster & Harding soon removed to Detroit, Mich., where after a few years Mr. Harding became editor of the Detroit Daily Advertiser. He found in journalism a more con- genial sphere, and filled the position of editor with dis- tinguished credit until his early death in 1856.

FLETCHER WEBSTER, a son of Daniel Webster, born in 18:2, and a graduate of Dartmouth, was as above stated the head of the law firm of Webster & Harding of Chicago for a brief interval in 1837, while residing at Peru ; but as he was never enrolled among the licensed lawyers of Illinois, and as the firm soon removed to Detroit, his connection with the early Chicago Bar is sufficiently noticed by this brief mention.

HENRY BROWN was born in Hebron, Tolland Co., Conn., May 13, 1789. The' father, Daniel, was a commissary in General Greene's division, in the Revolutionary War, and was granted a pension for his services. He provided a liberal academic and collegiate education for at least two of his sons. Henry graduat- ed at Yale, and when of age removed to New York, where he studied law, first at Albany under Abram Van Vechten, afterward at Canadaigua under John Gregg, and finally under his own elder brother, Daniel, at Batavia. Admitted to the Bar about 1813, he settled at Cooperstown; and in 1816 was appointed Judge of Herkimer County. After quitting the Bench, about 1824, Judge Brown continued the practice of law in Cooperstown until he removed to Chicago in 1836. Mr. Brown was elected Justice of the Peace May 20, 1837, vice E. E. Hunter resigned. His son Andrew Jesse, born in Springfield, N. Y., in 1820, arrived in Chicago in 1837, and Mrs. Brown and four daughters followed,

OHune Brown

in 1838. In 1839, his term as Justice expired, and he returned to his profession, to which, and some literary work, he devoted the remainder of his life. He was chosen City Attorney in 1842, and appointed, in 1843. upon the resignation of George Manierre. In March of the later year he announced that he was preparing to publish a history of Illinois, which was issued in New York City in 1844, and on which he had spent a year. His name does not appear on the Illinois list of licen- sed lawyers until February 27, 1845. Later in that year he took into partnership his son, who had studied law with him but had removed to Sycamore, DeKalb County, where he was admitted to the Bar December 27, 1842, and who had returned to Chicago in 1845.

January 20, 1846, Judge Brown as president of the Lyceum, delivered an inaugural on "Chicago, Present and Future,"* which has become historic, and which evinces deep thoughtfulness, great breadth of view and a quite marked foresight of Chicago's destiny. He died in 1849, three days after his sixty-first birthday, of cholera, being the first case in that year, and not sus- pected until after the disease had become epidemic. He was buried with Masonic honors, having stood high for many years in the confidence and respect of that fraternity. One of his earliest literary efforts was a defense of the order against the attacks of the anti- Masonic party, based on the alleged abduction of Mor-

"Published as part of No. 6 of Fergus's Historical Series,

Mrs. Martineau was very deaf and mistenk $30 for Sivo.

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HISTORY OF CHICAGO.

gan and other prejudices. It was published in Batavia while Mr. Brown resided there, forming a duodecimo of two hundred and forty pages. Judge Brown was one of the kindliest of men, very cordial in his intercourse with his fellows, and utterly devoid of pretension or vanity. All affectation of dignity and assumption of un- necessary gravity by others excited his ridicule, as he conceived such airs to be but an ingenious contrivance to conceal deficiency or impairment of brain power. Such was his habitual industry that during the greater por- tion of his life he labored at his duties or his studies sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. He was a man of the most extensive and varied reading, and had learned to cull flowers of fancy and gems of thought from all the literatures of mankind. He was of frank truthfulness and childlike candor, aud was universally respected for his many excellent qualities of head and heart. He was large and imposing of stature, weighing over two hundred pounds, and of dignified appearance. In politics Judge Brown was a Democrat, and enter- tained Mr. Van Buren during his visit to Chicago, July 4, 1842, and with him became a Free-Soiler in 1848, but he was too transparent to be a successful politician, and too broad to be a blind partisan. Besides the son al- ready mentioned, his wife and four daughters survived him. The eldest child, Cornelia A., born in Springfield, N. Y., August 12, 1818, married William H. Stickney, of Chicago, February 19, 1852. The second daughter, Julia, borne in Danube, Herkimer Co., N. Y., in 1822, married George W. Dole, of Chicago, March 30, 1853, and died October 16, 1865. Sarah, born June 13, 1824, married Dr. William Butterfield, October 23, 1844. Caroline, born August 1, 1826, married Thomas L. Forrest, July 10, 1848.

FRANCIS PEYTON, was a member of the early Bar of Chicago, though never formally enrolled as a lawyer in Illinois. He was a partner of James Grant in the spring of 1836. In the notable meeting of January, 1837, to promote internal improvements he was chair- man of committee on resolutions. In May of the same year he was chosen member of the first board of school inspectors of the new city. In the winter of 1838-39, he was attorney for Colonel Beaubien in the final effort to secure his claim to the Fort Dearborn Reservation. He conducted some law business before the Circuit Court in the spring term of 1839, and was one of the speakers on the occasion of a notable excursion on the steamboat " Great Western," August 13, of that year. He afterward came here in 1840 to assist State's Attor- ney Huntington in the Stone murder trial.

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History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 121

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas Number of Pages: 1340

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340