USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of representative men of Chicago, Minnesota cities and the World's Columbian exposition : with illustrations on steel. V. 1 > Part 23
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The subject of this sketch received his prelim- inary education in the public and private schools of Chicago, and after the return of his father to the State of Maine, in 1857, he attended the Lewiston Falls Academy, and there was prepared for Bowdoin College, which he entered in 1862, and from which he was graduated in 1866. Re- turning to Illinois, he spent the winter of 1866-7 in teaching school in Hyde Park, then a suburb of Chicago. Deciding upon the law as a voca- tion, he, in 1867, became a student in the offices of Higgins, Swett and Quigg. Entering at the
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same time the Union College of Law, at Chicago, he was graduated with the class of 1868, and selected to deliver the class valedictory. Three years later Mr. Herrick commenced the active practice of his profession-having in the mean- time remained with Messrs. Higgins, Swett and Quigg, as clerk and student, gaining thereby much additional legal knowledge and valuable experience of a practical nature. As in business, so in professional life: much depends upon the manner in which one's career is opened. From the very outset, that of John J. Herrick has been a marked success, while he soon acquired consid- erable reputation from his connection with sev- eral important cases; among others, the suits growing out of the alleged fraudulent election of Michael Evans and others to the South Town offices, and their ouster from office in 1876. And those growing out of the failure of the firm of John B. Lyon and Company, in 1872, and their suspension from the Board of Trade. In 1878, Mr. Herrick became associated with the late Mr. Wirt Dexter, and in 1880, Mr. Charles L. Allen was admitted to the partnership, the firm name becoming, Dexter, Herrick and Allen, and thus the firm continued until the death of Mr. Dexter, in May, 1890; since which time our subject has been associated with Mr. Allen, under the style of Herrick and Allen.
Among the many other important and noted cases with which Mr. Herrick has been con- nected was the case of Devine vs. People, and out of which arose the question of the consti- tutionality of the law authorizing the County Commissioners of Cook county to issue bonds without a vote of the people. The case of Barrow vs. Burnside, argued before the Su- preme Court of Iowa, and the Supreme Court of the United States, involving the validity of the Iowa Statute as to corporations of other States, known as the "Domestication Law." The cases of Stevens vs. Pratt, and Kingsbury vs. Sperry, before the Supreme Court of Illi- nois, and of Gross vs. United States Mortgage Company, and United States Mortgage Company vs. Kingsbury, before the Supreme Court of the United States, involving important questions as to the rights of foreign corporations in Illinois, and the construction of the Illinois Statutes as to guardians. The case of the Chicago and North-
Western Railroad Company vs. Dey, and other cases before the United States Courts in Iowa and Illinois. And of the State vs. Chicago, Bur- lington and Quincy Railroad Company before the Supreme Court of Nebraska, involving ques- tions of constitutional law, and important as defining the rights of railroad corporations. The case of Spalding vs. Preston, involving new and important questions as to the construction of the Illinois Assignment Law. Also the Taylor and Storey will cases. Space alone forbids an enu- meration of the many other and important cases with which Mr. Herrick has been connected. At present (1892), representing large corporate and private interests, the firm of Herrick and Allen have a fine record, and a reputation second to none.
Mr. Herrick has held, at various times, numer- ous offices in the Chicago Law Institute, the Chicago Bar Association and the Citizens' Asso- ciation. He is also a member of the Chicago Literary Society, and the University Club. He is a regular attendant at the Central Church in Central Music Hall, under the charge of Professor David Swing, of whom he is a great admirer.
In politics, Mr. Herrick, until 1884, was a Na- tional Republican. But, in 1884 and 1888, he voted for Grover Cleveland, and is now an advo- cate for the reduction of tariff on the line of free trade and civil service reform. In municipal and local affairs he is non-partisan, believing in meas- ures and men rather than in mere political wire pulling. He was married to Miss Julie A. Dulon in 1882. They have three children.
Mr. Herrick is, in the truest sense, a high- minded gentlemen. He is a man of scholarly attainments ; and in his professional, as in all his varied relations, seeks something higher and better than mere personal gain. With broad views of life, he rises above his calling or his environments, using them all as but means for the accomplishment of noble ends. Conscious of his own powers, he is yet modest and unassum- ing in manner, and never courts notoriety ; and while firm in his convictions, is tolerant of those whose opinions differ from his.
As an advocate, he is even eloquent at times. His style is clear and concise, and his arguments are sound and thoroughly logical, and rarely fail
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to convince. Mr. Herrick is, withal, a courteous gentleman, and affable, and possesses the happy faculty of making and retaining friends, of whom he has a host. He is counted among Chicago's
leading lawyers, and has the confidence and re- spect of all who know him. And none more richly deserves to be ranked among that city's representative men.
EPHRAIM BANNING,
CHICAGO, ILL.
F the many able lawyers whose specialty is patent law and patent cases, Mr. Banning stands second to none. Endowed by nature with a comprehensive mind and considerable mechanical ingenuity, he has attained great pro- ficiency in the methods and sciences especially applicable to that branch of the profession to which he has given particular attention.
Ephraim Banning was born near Bushnell, McDonough county, Illinois, July 21, 1849, his father being from Virginia and his mother from Kentucky. His father, after whom he was named, was a plain, sturdy farmer, with but little education except that acquired in the school of life, but with an energetic spirit, full of hope and courage. When our subject was quite young, the family moved to Kansas. The father was a pro- nounced abolitionist, and the committee of the convention, which made Kansas " a free State," held their meetings in his house.
Mr. Banning's mother, who was a sister of the late Judge Pinkney H. Walker, of the Supreme Court of Illinois, was a woman of much character, distinguished among her acquaintances for quiet, common sense and a most amiable disposition. On his mother's side were a number of well- known men, among others his grandfather, Gil- mer Walker, an able and honored lawyer, and his great uncle, Cyrus Walker, said to have been one of the most distinguished lawyers in Kentucky, and afterward one of the ablest in Illinois.
When he was but ten years old, the family re- moved to Missouri, and at the breaking out of the war, his two older brothers enlisted in the Union army and left him, being the next oldest, to assist his father in the care of the farm. His father's circumstances, as a pioneer farmer, were such that from his earliest childhood young Ban- ning was necessarily deprived of many of the op- portunities and privileges generally considered
indispensable to the proper development of boy- hood life. This was particularly so in the matter of education, for in this respect he was always re- quired to contend against adverse circumstances. But being an apt scholar, quick and anxious to learn, he acquired knowledge rapidly, and on more than one occasion, in his boyhood and youth, took the prize in his school. After finish- ing the elementary branches, he, at the age of seventeen, entered an academy at Brookfield, Missouri, where he studied the languages and higher branches of learning, under the preceptor- ship of the Rev. J. P. Finley, D.D.
After leaving the academy, Mr. Banning taught school a few months, and during this period be- gan the study of the law. He continued his legal studies in the office of Hon. Samuel P. Hus- ton, of Brookfield, and then, in the spring of 1871, removed to Chicago and entered the office of Messrs. Rosenthal and Pence, as a clerk and. student. In June, 1872, he was admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of Illinois, and in Octo- ber of the same year he opened an office and be- gan practicing for himself.
The building up of a practice by a young law- yer is generally slow, and especially so in a great city like Chicago, where attorneys are numbered by thousands, and in this respect Mr. Banning had the usual experience. But merit usually brings its reward, and so, in the course of a few years he came to be recognized in the courts and at the bar as a lawyer in fair general practice. About this time several cases came to him, in- volving questions of patent law. The intricate and scientific points of this branch of jurispru- dence, caused him to form a special liking for it, and his first argument in a patent cause was early in 1877, before Judge Blodgett, and from about this time, or a little later, may be dated his with- drawal from general practice and to devote him-
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self exclusively to patent law. Before this, how- ever, and for some years afterwards, while work- ing into patent law, he had a large and varied experience in general practice-in commercial, real estate, corporation and criminal law-and undoubtedly this general experience had much to do with subsequent work and success in his chosen specialty.
He entered into a partnership with his brother, Thomas A. Banning, in 1877, and in due time the firm of Banning & Banning became widely known as successful patent attorneys. They have argued a great number of patent and trade- mark cases, and now have a large practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, and in the lower federal courts in Chicago and elsewhere.
The firm still continues as first organized, ex- cept that Mr. George S. Payson was admitted as a member in 1888. Mr. Banning was married in October, 1878, to Miss Lucretia T. Lindsley, who
died in 1887, leaving three boys, all of whom are still living. In 1889, he was married to Miss Emilie B. Jenne, daughter of the late O. B. Jenne, of Elgin, Illinois. Mr. Banning is an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and a man of strong relig- ious and moral character. He is a Republican in politics, but has never held any office nor been a candidate for one. He is a member of the Union League Club, and connected with several organ- izations interested in the moral and material progress of Chicago.
During 1888 he made an extensive tour of Europe. He is in the prime of life, physically, but scarcely yet in the maturity of his intellectual powers, which will constantly strengthen with ex- ercise for many years to come.
With a mind strong and logical, a noble ambi- tion, there is every reason to expect that he will not only maintain his present position, but make it a stepping stone to other successes.
JAMES S. KIRK,
CHICAGO, ILL.
BY Y the death of James S. Kirk, the City of Chicago lost one of its most respected citi- zens, its business community one of its brightest lights, and the cause of education one of its strongest champions.
His father was a ship builder and civil engineer of prominence, in Glasgow, Scotland, where our subject was born, in 1818. When he was a child, six months old, the family moved to Montreal, where his childhood and earlier manhood days were passed. After receiving a thorough aca- demic education (graduating from the Montreal Academic Institute), he entered the lumber busi- ness, and personally superintended the camp in the woods and the drive down the Ottawa River.
When scarcely twenty-one years of age, he mar- ried Miss Nancy Ann Dunning, at Ottawa (then known as Bytown), and removed to the United States, making Utica, N. Y., his home. He im- mediately began the manufacture of soap and perfumes, and thus, in 1839, founded the house of James S. Kirk & Co., which has become the largest establishment of its kind, not only in the United States, but in the world.
In 1859, James S. Kirk and his family removed to Chicago, and continued in the soap manufac- turing business. With the exception of the dis- astrous effects of the fire of 1871, the prosperity of the house has been uninterrupted.
For fifty years the stern old churchman (for all his life he was an earnest and consistent Christian) had striven to perfect the business scheme of his life. Success crowned his efforts, and he was enabled to pass his declining years in well-earned retirement in a luxurious home in South Evanston.
The ground that the manufacturing plant of Jas. S. Kirk & Co. covers is the historical site of the first house ever erected in Chicago. Less than a century has passed since then, and no more fit- ting comparison can be drawn than the statement that the spot where a solitary hermit made his abode ninety odd years ago is now covered by a manufacturing plant that has an output greater than any of its kind in the entire world.
The business is still continued under the same name under which it was organized, an uninter- rupted period of fifty-two years, and although it
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is now one of the very few establishments (if not the only one) in the United States that have passed through a half century of existence with- out change of name. The pride which the family take in the record of Jas. S. Kirk will undoubt- edly cause it to be unchanged for many decades.
The Northwestern University, located in Evans- ton, that most beautiful of Chicago's suburbs, al- ways found in Jas. S. Kirk a warm champion and firm friend. His family still follow his desires in regard to assisting this worthy educational insti- tution, and take great and honest pride in assist- ing both financially and personally any deserving and needy cause that will advance the people to a higher degree of education. Mr. Kirk was es- teemed as a scholarly gentleman ; he was very highly educated, and took great interest in every- thing pertaining towards higher cultivation.
In summing up the events of his life, it can most truly be stated that there never was a resi- dent of Chicago who was more highly respected and esteemed than he was. During the years of his life he was looked upon as a model of honor and an example of the truly honest business man. He ever endeavored to instill into the minds of his sons the honorable principles that placed him on such an elevated pedestal. That his descend- ants have treasured his desires and his good pre- cepts, is proven by the universal respect and es- teem in which all members of his family are held.
On the fifteenth day of June, 1886, in the bosom of his family, he passed peacefully and quietly away from this earth, like one fully con- scious of meeting in a more sanctified place those nearest and dearest to him.
CHARLES CARROLL BONNEY,
CHICAGO, ILL.
C HARLES CARROLL BONNEY, president of the World's Congress Auxiliary of the World's Columbian Exposition, president of the International Law and Order League, ex-presi- dent of the Illinois State Bar Association, coun- sellor of the Supreme Court of the United States, etc., etc., has long been prominently before the American people in various honorable positions.
The following facts relating to his career as teacher, lawyer, orator, author and reformer, have been collected and condensed from numerous notices, biographical sketches and other publica- tions. He is a native of the State of New York, was born at Hamilton in 1831, was named for Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, and is a farmer's son. He was educated in public schools, Hamilton Academy, and chiefly by pri- vate study, with many advantages from Madison University, though engaged in teaching instead of pursuing the regular course of instruction. He was a teacher in the public schools, or the Hamilton Academy, from the age of seventeen till he moved to Peoria, Illinois, at the age of nineteen. He there taught an academic school for two years; was public lecturer on education for Peoria county
in 1852-3; vice-president of a State Teachers' Institute, and took a leading part in establishing the present educational system of Illinois, con- ducting the correspondence which resulted in the first State convention for educational purposes, and organizing numerous educational societies.
Mr. Bonney commenced reading law when but seventeen, and became a writer for the public press at nineteen. He was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1852, and to that of the United States Supreme Court in 1866, was president of the Illinois State Bar Association, and vice-president of the American Bar Association, in 1882, and has taken a leading part in the proceedings of both associations. He removed from Peoria to Chicago in 1860, where he has since resided. His practice has embraced all departments of law, and includes reported cases in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Nebraska, New York, New Jersey, California and the United States Supreme Court. Public press notices of many States describe him as a profound and accomplished lawyer, one of the most eminent and distinguished members of the Chicago bar, and a writer on legal and political subjects of wide reputation. Immediately after the suspen- sion of the habeas corpus during the rebellion, he
C
Charles Carroll Bonney
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published a statement of the jurisdiction of the Courts under the suspension, as afterwards ju- dicially held, and upon the enactment of the in- ternal revenue law, he made the first argument in Court, and which was widely published, showing the unconstitutionality of the tax on the process of the State Courts, taking the positions subse- quently sustained by the judiciary. In 1887, he was strongly recommended by leading legal, finan- cial and other journals, for appointment as one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, as a man who stands in the very front rank of Western lawyers and jurists, of high liter- ary culture, of judicial temperament, undoubtedly worthy of that high position, and who would be an ornament to any judicial position.
He was one of the originators of the Law and Order Movement for enforcing the existing laws that began in Illinois in 1872, and took its present form almost simultaneously in that State, and in New York and Massachusetts in 1877, and soon after extended to Pennsylvania and other States. It attained a national organization under the name of "The Citizen's Law and Order League of the United States," in a convention of which he was president, held at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1883. That organization was changed at Toronto, Can- ada, in 1890, to "The International Law and Order League," to include the societies in the provinces of the Dominion. He was elected president of the League at New York in 1885, at Cincinnati in 1886, at Albany in 1887, at Philadel- phia in 1888, at Boston in 1889, at Toronto in 1890, and has since been re-elected and now holds that position. As such president, he has deliv- ered in the above and in other leading cities of the United States and Canada, elaborate addresses in favor of law enforcement, and setting forth the scope and purposes of the Law and Order Move- ment.
In politics, Mr. Bonney was a party democrat before the rebellion of 1861, a war democrat while it continued, and has since been independ- ent in political action. He entered active politics in 1852, and acquired "a brilliant reputation as a political orator " in 1856, supporting Mr. Douglas, whose doctrine of squatter sovereignty he after- wards opposed. In 1857 he took a leading and successful part in an exciting contest to preserve the freedom of the Illinois river, representing the
city government of Peoria as a special commis- sioner to the city of St. Louis.
In the field of practical reform, Mr. Bonney's efforts have been important and largely success- ful. Among the leading reforms advanced by him are the following, with the dates when he began to write and speak in their favor, and, if carried into effect, the time of their adoption : Uniformity of State constitutions and general statutes, proposed in 1852; constitutional prohi- bition of special legislation, proposed in 1854, and adopted in Illinois in 1870; a national banking system, proposed in 1858, and adopted by Con- gress in 1864; railroad supervision by State authority, proposed in 1861, and adopted in Illinois in 1871 ; a national civil service academy to educate selected men in government and diplomacy as the Military Academy does in the art of war, proposed in 1876; national regulation of Inter-State Commerce, proposed in 1878, and adopted by Congress in 1887; uniformity of com- mercial paper in Inter-State transactions, proposed in 1882, and since pending in Congress ; a system of civil service pensions, proposed in 1884; State boards of labor and capital, with plenary executive powers to prevent labor strikes, proposed in 1886; the appointment of regular United States judges to hold the foreign Courts now held by consuls and ministers, proposed in 1888, and the estab- lishment of a permanent International Court of Justice, proposed in 1889, and favored by eminent European and American jurists and statesmen.
Mr. Bonney was president of the Chicago Library Association in 1870, edited the poetical works of Judge Arrington, and is the author of hand books of Railway Law, and the Law of In- surance, and of numerous addresses and essays on important subjects, including among others, “A Great Lawyer," "Judicial Supremacy," "'The Administration of Justice," "The Province of Government," " Law Reform," "Government Re- form," "The Conflict of Capital and Labor," " Naturalization Laws and Their Enforcement," " Reform of the Foreign Service," " International Justice" and " International Citizenship."
Mr. Bonney is also the author of the scheme for a series of World's Congresses in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, intended to set forth, on what has been declared " a scale of unexampled majesty,". the achieve-
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ments of mankind in all the departments of civ- ilized life, and to promote future progress by the fraternal co-operation of the enlightened minds of all countries. The organization and direction of this enterprise has been in his charge from the be- ginning. He was chairman of the preliminary committee, to which the subject was first en- trusted, and when, to meet the growing necessi- ties of the work, the World's Congress Auxiliary was organized, Mr. Bonney was made president of that body, and its chief executive and manager. So much progress has been made, and so much distinguished co-operation has been secured, that there seems to be no reason to doubt that a very great success will crown the undertaking. In an- nouncing the project, Mr. Bonney said :
"To make the Exposition complete and the celebration adequate, the wonderful achievements
of the new age in science, literature, education, government, jurisprudence, morals, charity, relig- ion, and other departments of human activity, should also be conspicuously displayed, as the most effective means of increasing the fraternity, progress, prosperity and peace of mankind ; and after setting forth the plan, that 'such congresses, convened under circumstances so auspicious, would doubtless surpass all previous efforts to bring about a real fraternity of nations, and unite the enlightened people of the whole earth in a general co-operation for the attainment of the great ends for which human society is organized.'"
As organized in January, 1892, when this sketch was prepared, the World's Congress scheme em- braced fifteen great departments, and more than one hundred general divisions in which congresses are to be held.
REUBEN LUDLAM, M.D.,
CHICAGO, IL.L.
TT is much to achieve success, it is infinitely more to win the gratitude of the suffering and afflicted. In our community there is, per- haps, no one who in this regard has greater reason for content than Dr. Reuben Ludlam.
Nearly forty years of most devoted labor have placed him among the few who may be said to be at the head of the medical profession in the Northwest, and such has been the cordial, kindly, generous manner of this ministration, that in the hearts of those who have received it, there is a sense of grateful recognition that words cannot express.
Reuben Ludlam was born in Camden, N. J., Oct. 7, 1831. His father was Dr. Jacob W. Lud- lam, an eminent physician, who died in 1858 at Evanston, Illinois, after a long life beneficently spent in the practice of his beloved profession. His widow, now in her eighty-third year, still re- sides at Evanston.
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