History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Part 66

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 875

USA > Illinois > Cook County > History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time > Part 66

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HISTORY OF COOK COUNTY.

was invited by Irad Hill to take passage on his raft to St. Joseph, whence he came to Chicago on the Ariadne, under command of Captain Pickering, arriving in the outer harbor June 19, 1833. Here he soon began to pick up such petty cases as offered, some of which are referred to elsewhere. In his law business . of that year should be mentioned his effort in behalf of some six free negroes, at a fee of perhaps of one dollar cach. The law of Illinois re- quired that free negroes should show their manumission papers, to entitle them to free circulation among the whites. The Chicago blacks of the period claimed to be born in the free States, but having no papers were subjected to annoyance under the letter of the law from the hostility of such as were enemies of their race. Caton brought their case before the Court of County Commissioners, pleading with success that some court representing the sovereignty of the State must have the right of granting freedom papers to these unfortunates ; and that their honorable body was such court. Though they may not have been able to find any constitutional or legislative grant of such powers their hearts yielded to the enthusiasm of the young lawyer, and they author- ized the issuing of the required papers. In the fall of 1833, Mr. Caton went to Pekin, Tazewell County, to be examined for admission to the Bar by Judge Lock wood, who thus addressed him at the close : "Young man, I shall give you a license, but you have a great deal to learn to make you a good lawyer. If you work hard, you will attain it ; if you do not, you will be a failure." He then proceeded to Greenville, Bond County, and had his license indorsed by Judge Smith." January 1, 1834, he set out as guide to Dr. Temple, mail-con- tractor, on the first stage coach which left Chicago for Ottawa. In February, he formed a partnership with his former law-teacher, Collins. In May he attended the Circuit Court, and brought the first jury case, being the identical one in which he cheated his friend Spring out of a client but into a better fee, as elsewhere stated.t Mr. Caton was elected Justice of the Peace, July 12, 1834, receiving one hundred and eighty-two votes out of a total of two hundred and twenty-nine, in a very active campaign, which left but a few if any votes un- polled. In the fall of 1834, he was ill for forty-seven days in the country at Colonel Warren's, and remembers of the court business of that term only the memorable case of uxoricide by an Irishman, whose acquittal was unexpectedly secured by the plea of Collins, on which the court instructed the jury, that if they could not find him guilty of murder in the first degree, as indicted, it was their duty not to bring in a verdict of manslaughter in any degree, but to acquit. On the 28th of July, 1835, Mr. Caton married Laura Adelaide, daughter of Ja- cob Sherrill, of New Hartford, Oneida Co., N. Y., whose affections he had won some few years before. In a contest with Isaac Harmon for the office of Probate Judge to succeed Richard J. Hamilton, Caton was de- feated. In 1836, with N. B. Judd, he formed the firm of Caton & Judd ; and in that year built the first dweli- ing within the school section, on the West Side, at the southeast corner of Harrison and Clinton streets. He took an active part in the movement for a city charter in November, 1836, representing the second district of the town in the meeting for consultation with trustees. The financial troubles of 1837 did not leave him un- scathed ; he lost not only most of his real estate but his

health also ; and in 1838 he took refuge on a farm near Plainfield, which he had entered some years before, and of which he plowed a portion that year, and to which he moved his family in 1839. He kept up his law practice in three or four neighboring counties, being the first lawyer to bring suit in the Circuit Courts of Kane and Will counties, as he had previously been in Cook County. In 1840, again in conflict with Harmon, Having recovered his health he accepted the position of, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court made vacant by the election of Judge Ford as Governor, his commission bearing date August 20, 1842. In the October term of that year, in Bureau County, the historic case of the People r's. lovejoy for that " he did harbor, feed, secrete and clothe a certain slave girl, knowing her to be such," etc., was tried before the new Judge, who distinctly laid down the principle, new in that day, that "if a man voluntarily brings his slave into a free State the slave becomes free," which had much influence on the jury in acquitting Lovejoy. At the close of the legislative session in March, 1843, John M. Robinson, who had been United States Senator, 1835 to 1841, was elected to the vacant judgeship, but dying in April, Caton, after an intermission of only a month, was selected by Governor Ford, and at the next session of the General Assembly was elected by them, and served until the re-organization of the judiciary under the Constitution of 1848. He was then elected one of the three Justicesof the Supreme Court December 4. 1848, who were to serve three, six and nine years, by which provision the election of one Justice every three years was secured. The six- years term fell to Caton, and towards its close, on the resignation of Chief Justice Treat, in April, 1855, he succeeded the place of pre-eminence for the few remaining months. Being re-elected in June, 1855, for nine years, he again became head of the Bench on the resignation of Chief Justice Scates in 1857, and so con- tinned until his own resignation, January 9, 1864, five months before the expiration of his term. To accom- pany an ailing daughter to Europe he laid aside the er- mine which he had worn for over twenty-one years with honor to himself, credit to the Bench and satisfaction to the Bar and the people. Meanwhile he had become in- terested, in 1849, in what was then known as O'Reilly's telegraph, but which was organized as the Illinois & Mississippi Telegraph Company, of which he was chosen a director. In 1852 the company was on the verge of bankruptcy and was saved only by Judge Caton's business tact and fertility of resource. He proposed that the company should obtain from the General As- sembly of Illinois an amendment to their charter author- izing an assessment, and the sale of the defaulting stock. The board concurred and elected him president and general superintendent with absolute power. He se- cured the necessary legislation, and obtained enough from an assessment of $2.50 on each share, and the sales of defaulting shares, to meet the most pressing obliga- tions; and devoted his spare time, without however the slightest infringement on his judicial functions. He studied the art of telegraphy, making himself an expert of that day; traveling in the Northern wilds to obtain a supply of cedar posts, negotiating with railroad com- panies in Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota for transporta- tion, and placing his lines along their roads. The Weekly Democrat of November 3, 1853, thus refers to his activity at this period: "Judge Caton will soon be the telegraph king of the West. From all parts of Illi- nois we have reports of the system and energy with which the telegraph lines are managed, and of new vil-

* On the Supreme Court list his name does not appear until December 5. 1835.

f Judge Caton holds that this was the first term of the Circuit Court of Chicago in which any law business was done. If Judge Young was here earlier, he may have organized a grand jury, or only passed through.

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lages being put in communication with the rest of man- kind by means of the lightning wires." After some years the stock of the company began to pay dividends; and in 1867 its lines were leased to the Western Union Telegraph Company, Judge Caton retiring from the management. His pursuits since then have been a com- bination of literary and business enterprises, intermingled with the superintendence of his large farm, and the adornment of his city home on Calumet Avenue, and numerous journeys at home and abroad. His judicial decisions are scattered through twenty-seven volumes of Illinois Reports from Scammon III to Illinois XXX. In these he has stamped the impress of his mind indel . ibly on the jurisprudence of the State. They exhibit a man of industry in research, a writer of vigor and method, a thinker who is argumentative and discriminating, and occasionally original. A few of his decisions especially after experience had taught him to lop off redundency, would do credit to a Judge of any Bench, State or National. While not overladen with citations they are marked by deliberation and sound sense, and have stood the test of time. His early habits of self reliance impart a vigorous individuality, and his power of seizing essential points gives a clearness to his decisions that make them both readable and valua- ble. The best traits of his judicial style are reproduccd in his other writings which cover antiquarian and scien- tific as well as purely literary and historical researches. He generally expresses his thought with clearness and precision, and as much condensation as is consistent with an easy, full and unaffected style. As an advocate he was not remarkable for readiness, requiring careful study to insure success. But his long experience as a Judge and man of affairs, enhanced by his later indus- try in the fields of literature, has developed a fair read- iness for extemporaneous speaking, and some of his latest public addresses have been marked by the easy self-possession of a man long accustomed to the exer- cise of recognized and respected authority. His mind is rather active than brilliant ; and he is properly re- garded by himself and others as a man of patient indus- try, endowed with a good working mental apparatus rather than genius or phenomenal power. Of large and rugged frame, his brain is of similar type-brawn and brain being closely related. At this writing, he is in his seventy-second year, still hale and active, alternating between town and country, between literary investiga- tions and business undertakings, between scientific in- quiries and the pursuits of a country gentleman, sur- rounded by his flocks and herds, with no serious physi- cal impairment except a dimness of vision produced by cataract which he hopes to have successfully removed in a few months. Mr. and Mrs. Caton are the parents of seven children, of whom three died in infancy, one at the age of five, and three survive. Of these one is a son, Arthur J., who is a lawyer, and two are daughters, Mrs. Norman Williams and Mrs. Charles E. Towne, whose husbands are lawyers. All these reside in their respect- ive homes within the same inclosure as their parents, which seems the crowning glory of a life largely devot- ed to the welfare of the family.

GRANT GOODRICH, born in Milton Township, Sara- toga Co., N. Y., August 11, 1812, is the eighth son and ninth child of Gideon and Eunice Warren Good- rich, and a direct descendant in the seventh generation from William Goodrich, who arrived in New England in 1630. In 1817 Gideon Goodrich removed with his family to Chautauqua County, N. Y., and here the sub- ject of our sketch received his early education in his father's house, from a teacher whose pupils consisted

mainly of the Goodrich children. Some five years later young Goodrich went to live with a married sister at Westfield, in the same county, where he had an oppor- tunity to get an inkling of the higher English branches and of the Greek and Latin classics under the guidance of a resident lawyer. About 1825 being it was thought predisposed to consumption, he took to lake navigation in the vessels of his brother, a shipowner of Portland Harbor on Lake Erie, whither his father had also re- moved. In 1827 with a physical system strengthened beyond expectation by the air and exercise of two years of seafaring life, young Goodrich, now in his sixteenth year, returned to Westfield to prosecute his studies at the Academy of that place. In 1830, he there entered the law office .of Dixon & Smith ; and in his twenty-second year set out for the West, arriving in Chicago, "early in May, 1834." Two months later he made a journey to Jacksonville, where he was examined and licensed by Judge Lockwood of the Supreme Court. As early as June, 1835, he formned a law partnership with A. N. Fullerton, which was chiefly devoted to the sale and renting of real estate, and was dissolved February 22, 1836. With- in a few days Mr. Goodrich became the law partner of Giles Spring, and so continued until the election of the latter to the Bench in 1849. Both partners found wives at Westfield, where Goodrich had been long and favor- ably known, and where he had joined the Methodist Church in 1832. He married Miss Julict Atwater, July 24, 1836. In common with almost every other enter- prising citizen of the Chicago of 1837 the panic of that year found him involved on his own and others'account to the extent of $60,000, which it took many years to clear off, hut which he eventually paid without abate- ment. He not only advocated payment in full of all obligations by the State, city and individuals, but en- forced the exhortation by example. In 1838, he was elected Alderman of the Sixth Ward, and was president of the Lyceum in 1839. The firm of Spring & Goodrich did a very respectable part of the law business of Chicago during the thirteen years of its continuance, the excellent personal habits of Mr. Goodrich being a valuable counterpoise to the unfortunate infirmity of Spring, while the legal ability of both commanded the con- ficence of clients. A short-lived partnership with Buck- ner S. Morris followed in 1850, and was dissolved in 1857, Mr. Goodrich practicing for a time alone. About this time he co-operated zealously with others for the establishment of the Northwestern University at Evans- ton. In 1852 he was partner of George Scoville, and in 1855 W. W. Farwell, now better known as Judge Farwell, joined them, the firm becoming Goodrich, Far- well & Scoville. In 1856 Sidney Smith took the place of Scoville, and the prestige of the firm was enhanced rather than diminished by the change, Goodrich, Far- well & Smith being universally recognized as a strong combination. In 1857, Mr. Goodrich's health gave way and under the advice of his physician he made a pro- tracted tour of Europe, not returning home until the spring of 1859, when he was elected Associate Justice of the newly constituted Superior Court of Chicago, a position he retained until 1863, when he resumed his place in the law firm as constituted before his departure for Europe six years before.

In 1871, he lost considerable property by the fire, and it took about five years to recover from its results. In 1874 he withdrew from general practice, and has since devoted himself chiefly to the care of his property, and the encouragement of the various social, religious and benevolent interests of Chicago in which he has

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borne a share for more than half a century. Originally a to D. L. Gregg, of Joliet. In 1846 Mr. Skinner was Whig, and later a free-soiler and abolitionist he drifted, easily into the Republican party, and was an earnest supporter of Lincoln's administration and the war for the Union. A temperance man on principle, he pre- fers high license to prohibition as a means of reducing the appalling volume of crime and poverty which spring from the liquor traffic. As a Judge he ranked among the most absolutely impartial and thoroughly informed on the Bench of this city; and no taint or suspicion of unfaithfulness or venality has ever attached to his career as Judge, lawyer or citizen. His wide business experience and excellent personal habits, as well as his extended knowledge of the principles of law and ready familiarity with the statutes of Illinois, together with his firmness of character and soundness of judgment, have made him not only a successful advocate but a very valuable counselor. Mr. and Mrs. Goodrich are the parents of four sons and one daughter. One son died at the age of twenty-six, a studious, well educated and promising lawyer. Another son is now a member of the Chicago Bar. A third son is a manufacturer in Boston, and the fourth is a real estate dealer here. The daughter settled in St. Louis, on her marriage, but on the death of her husband returned to her father's house. Now (1883) in his seventy-second year, and in the enjoy- ment of exceptional health and vigor, Mr. Goodrich can look back on a more successful and better rounded life than most men.

MARK SKINNER was born September 13, 1813, at Manchester, Bennington Co., Vt., where his father, Richard, a native of Connecticut, had settled as a law- yer in 1800. His mother was of the historic Pierpont family. The elder Skinner became professionally and politically prominent in the State of his adoption. He was Prosecuting Attorney and Probate Judge, Member of the Legislature and Governor, Representative in Congress, and Chief Justice of the State. Young Skin- ner had all the advantages of a good early education, followed by a careful preparation for college and com-

Mark Einum

pleted by a course of study in Middlebury College, Ver- mont, which he entered in 1830, and from which he graduated in 1833, before he was quite twenty. His father died the same year, and he began his law studies under Judge Ezek Cowen at Saratoga Springs, and Nicholas Hill, afterward of Albany. He also spent a year at the New Haven Law School of Yale. He now determined to make Chicago his home and arrived here in July, 1836.

He at once obtained admission to the Bar, and with- in a month formed a law partnership with Mr. Beau- mont. In 1837 he was chosen one of the board of School Inspectors, and for many years he was a leading spirit in all that concerned the well-being and advance- ment of the school interests of Chicago. He was chosen City Attorney March 10, 1840, and on the resignation by Justin Butterfield of the office of U. S. District At- torney for Illinois, in 1844, Mr. Skinner was appointed to fill the vacancy, and an effort was made by his friends to secure him a more permanent occupancy of the posi- tion, but the friends of I. N. Arnold also bestirred them- selves in the same direction. In the interests of har- mony [Mr. Skinner peremptorily declined being a candi- date in March, 1845,] the appointment was given

elected to the Legislature, and was appointed chairman of the committee on finance. He introduced a bill for refunding the State debt which was of great value, by definitely determining the extent of the debt, by intro- ducing system and responsibility in its management, and by reducing six or eight different styles of bonds into one uniform and only authorized issue. In the ap- portionment of delegates to the State Convention of 1847. he labored with success to secure as the basis thereof the State Census of 1845 rather than the United States census of 1840. By reason of the more rapid growth of Chicago and northern Illinois, a just repre- sentation and proper weight of influence in the com- ing convention could thus only have been secured. He was also instrumental at this time in securing the passage of an act to resume payment of interest on the State debt, which had been in default nearly ten years. Soon after the close of his legislative labors, March 1, 1847, he resumed the practice of his profession, forming a partnership with Thomas Hoyne, April 24. On the death of Judge Spring in May, 1851, Mr. Skinner be- came a candidate for the Bench of the Cook County Court of Common Pleas, and was elected over his com- petitor, John M. Wilson, for the remainder of Spring's term to June, 1853, when he declined a renomination, because of ill-health contracted through the excessive labors of that court. At his entrance on the duties of Judge, finding the calendar overladen, he sat continu- ously for seven months, cleared it up and kept ahead. With his retirement from the Bench, his previous with- drawal from political contention, and the interruption to professional practice incident to both episodes as well as the threatened physical infirinity, he turned his attention to the management of large financial oper- ations, in which his success has been very marked. No one in Chicago, perhaps, has so largely represented non- resident capitalists or handled larger amounts of the borrowed money so extensively used in building the city. In 1858 he became a member of the Second Pres- byterian Church, In the Rebellion period his services were conspicuous and valuable as first president of the Chicago Sanitary Commission, afterward named the Northwestern, from 1861 to 1864. He was also a mem- ber of the more general United States Sanitary Com- mission during the whole period of its existence. Be- sides his valuable services in that field he also gave to his country, in 1862, his eldest son Richard, who had just graduated at Yale, at the age of twenty, and who then entered the regular army as Second Lieutenant in the Tenth Infantry, and was killed before Petersburg, Va., June 22, 1864. Judge Skinner has been actively identified with nearly all the benevolent and reforma- tory enterprises of Chicago, and more especially with the Reform School, of which he was one of the original founders, and president of the first board of directors. With his usual energy and ability he made a business- like investigation of all such institutions as were accessi- ble for personal inspection and a diligent study from printed reports of the more famous reformatory institu- tions of England, France and Germany, His connec- tion with the earlier railroads of Chicago as a director of the Galena & Chicago, and of the Chicago, Burling- ton & Quincy, was of no slight value to those enter- prises by reason of his marked financial ability and the wisdom of his counsels as a lawyer and a man of busi- ness.

ENOCH WEBSTER EVANS was born at Fryburg, Ox- ford Co., Me., in 1817, of William and Anne (Webster) Evans, Getting his earlier education at the common

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school and academy of Fryburg, he spent two years at Waterville College, and two at Dartmouth, where he graduated in the class of 1838. He studied law under Judge Chase, of Hopkinton, N. H., until the summer of 1840, when he set out for Chicago. Here he spent a few months in the office of Spring & Goodrich, and secured admission to the Bar, as is supposed, although his name does not appear on the Supreme Court list until March 14, 1842. He was partner with Joseph N. Balestier for a short time, Balestier & Evans being found advertised in the Daily American of September 25, 1840. . He attracted some attention about the same time as a speaker at the Tippecanoe Club. He soon re- moved to Dixon, Ill., where for a time he was the part- ner of the late Judge Heaton, and from there to Ken- osha, Wis., where he was married September 16, 1846, to Miss Caroline Hyde, daughter of a Mr. Hyde, of Da- rien, Genesee Co., N. Y. In 1858 he returned to Chi- cago, and was for a short time the law partner of James T. Hoyt, and still later, of Mr. Tousely. He was, how- ever, better fitted for independent professional business than for partnership. There have been but few lawyers so devoted to the profession as Mr. Evans, He was a lawyer and nothing else, except a good citizen, a worthy man, and an excellent husband and father. In 1871 he was urged by many of the most influential lawyers to become a candidate for Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, but declined. His more notable cases were Wilkinson rs. Chicago Tribune, and the Zeigenmeyer murder case. He was very extensively identified with suits for damages against corporations, especially the railroads and the city, in cases of personal injury, and his success in these was quite remarkable. He was naturally, or by force of habit, earnest, urgent and convincing as a speaker, and was usually able to marshal all his resources of pleading and argument, as well as persuasion and eloquence, as far as necessary for the success of his case, before a jury. But his power before the Supreme Court, or in chambers, was still more creditable to his ability as a thorough lawyer. He died September 2, 1879, leaving a wife, two sons and two daughters. The elder of the sons is William W., a lawyer, and the younger is Lewis H., a civil en- gineer. Of the daughters one is married and the other single. He was a regular attendant at St. John's Epis- copal Church, especially while in charge of his friend, Dr. H. N. Powers, but was not a member of any Church. At the Bar meeting in commemoration of his death Calvin De Wolf, who had known him since 1840, said : " He was eminently worthy of admiration and esteem;" and the committee on resolutions declared : " That in the death of Mr. Evans the community had lost a most worthy and excellent citizen, a man of the highest in- tegrity and honor, the Bar one of its brightest orna- ments, the record of whose professional career during its entire length has never suffered blot or stain, and his widow and family a husband and father endeared to them by that devotedly affectionate attachment which renders home so worthy." " He was not," said Judge Moore, "an ordinary man, but one who ran over with earnestness for whatever he undertook. He was a lawyer of more than usual learning and intelligence. . * * He was a man of majestic sentiment, who drew others to him."

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History of Cook County, Illinois From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Part 66

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas Number of Pages: 875

Author: Andreas, A. T. (Alfred Theodore), 1839-1900
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago : A.T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 875