USA > Indiana > White County > A standard history of White County Indiana : an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and county, Vol. I > Part 16
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"THE CHOCTAW LINE"
"When a regular symposium was held, usually at the close of the term, these games were accompanied by music, the songs of the circuit. The ballads sung were jovial, but not beyond the line of becoming decorum. 'In the Season of the Year,' 'Gabriel's Wedding,' 'Life Let Us Cherish' and the 'Arkansas Gentleman,' were specimens. The 'Ar- kansas Gentleman' was a general favorite. It was a sort of poetical centipede, having rhymed terminals, though the feet in the lines were irregular and almost innumerable.
" 'This fine Arkansas gentleman went strong for Pierce and King, And when the election was over he went down to Washington to get an office or some other comfortable thing;
But when he got there the boys told him that the trumps were all played and the game was up, yet they treated him so fine
That he came back to his plantation and lived happier than ever just on the Choctaw line.'
"The counterpart of this pilgrim to Washington might doubtless be found in many places today; no poet has celebrated his journey, and even if some of our bards had done so it is hardly to be supposed that any member of the bar would now sing or even deign to listen to such a roundelay.
"The Choctaw Line became a proverbial expression in our circuit for a life of good cheer and hospitality. A witness called in a certain case to a question of character, after answering the usual inquiries, summed up his statement with the remark that the gentleman asked about was an honest man, a good neighbor and citizen, and had lived for many years as near to the Choctaw Line as any person he had ever known. This evidence was perfectly understood both by the judge and jury engaged in hearing the cause.
PLAYED "WHEN SCHOOL WAS OUT"
" These convivialities of the bar were limited to the members of their own brotherhood and occurred when those who participated in them were off duty. These same gentlemen, when engaged in the courtroom in the trial of a case pending, were models of the gravest propriety. When the active business of the term was over the revels commenced ; all waited for the final adjournment, and no one ever thought of leaving the judge to make the journey alone to the next appointment. It must not be for-
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gotten that these veterans of the bench and bar were living at the close of what might be called on old dispensation, the distinctive feature of which was the circuit practice. Much of their time was spent away from home. On their travels, mostly made on horseback, they encountered bad roads and often worse weather; their professional work was per- formed with great skill and fidelity, frequently under circumstances of much discomfort. When the labors of the term were ended, or, to use their own expression, when school was out, they felt as if they had a right to some amusement. They took not the least pains to disguise or con- ceal the character of their recreations, as these were not, in their view, the subject of any reasonable reproach or discredit.
NOT DOLLAR-SLAVES
"Members of the old bar were not at all inferior to those of the new in capacity or integrity, in dignity, courtesy or learning. These patri- archs made no sort of claim to virtues, or so-called virtues, which they did not possess, or to habits which they did not practice. They did not write elaborate essays for the magazines upon the subject of professional ethics, but they thoroughly understood and rigidly enforced the rules of that species of morality. The attorney who indulged in sharp prac- tice against his fellow member of the bar might be once or twice for- given, but he who resorted to such means in dealing with a client or a layman instantly lost caste, and that beyond respite or remedy.
"The fee was regarded as a proper accompaniment for legal service, but it was not the chief object in professional life. The lawyers of those days were untouched by the commercial spirit, untainted by the slightest trace of reverence for wealth as such. They felt in their faces the breath of the coming age; overheard in the distance the gigantic steps of approaching material progress, and somewhat adapted their methods to its action, but always within the elemental lines of rectitude and jus- tice. Sometimes seated around a blazing log fire in a wayside country tavern, they discussed with keen zest and much philosophie foresight the probable legal questions of the coming time. Having done this, they left these subjects, not without deep concern, but with unfaltering trust and confidence, to the wise and pure arbitrament of the tribunals of the future."
ROBERT H. MILROY
Robert H. Milroy, who succeeded Judge Biddle in November, 1852, was a resident of Delphi, Carroll County. The Ninth Circuit, of which he was the presiding judge, was then composed of White, Carroll, Lake, Laporte, Porter, St. Joseph, Marshall, Starke, Fulton, Cass, Pulaski, Howard and Miami. Judge Milroy left a good record as a lawyer, a judge and a soldier, serving as a captain in the Mexican war and a col- onel in the War of the Rebellion.
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JOHN U. PETTIT
John U. Pettit, who became presiding judge in May, 1853, served . about a year, and then resigned for congressional honors, finally becom- ing speaker of the House of Representatives. He was also one of D. D. Pratt's boys; was admitted to the Logansport bar in 1841, but located in the following year at Wabash, where he resided until his death in 1881.
JOHN M. WALLACE
John M. Wallace, who was Judge Pettit's successor, ascended the bench in November, 1854, and also ranked high in his profession. Before he became judge he had served with credit in the Mexican war and was afterward a colonel in the Civil war and a paymaster in the regular army.
OTHER CIRCUIT JUDGES, 1855-1915
John Pettit, of Lafayette, who afterward served as one of the judges of the State Supreme Court, presided over the Circuit Court of White County from March, 1855, to March, 1856, and the following occupied the bench from that date until 1888, when Alfred W. Reynolds, already designated as the first member of the profession from White County to be thus honored, assumed his judicial duties: Andrew Ingham, com- menced his term in March, 1856; John Pettit, September, 1857; Charles H. Test, March, 1858; David P. Vinton, 1870; Bernard B. Daily, who was the first judge of the new circuit composed of White, Carroll and Pulaski counties, May, 1875; and John H. Gould, who refused a third term, October, 1876 to 1888; Alfred W. Reynolds, 1888-94; Truman F. Palmer, 1894-1906; and James P. Wason, of Delphi, the present incum- bent, since 1906.
THE "WHEREFORE" OF SO MANY JUDGES
Sill's unpublished "History of White County" thus condenses a number of salient facts connected with the White County Circuit Court : "The remarkable increase in population in northwestern Indiana, and especially in White county, which had more than doubled in the decade between 1840 and 1850, created a necessity for a frequent change of circuits and the creation of new ones. The legislature could not legislate. a Circuit judge out of office as it could the judge of a court created by statute, for the Circuit Court was provided for in the constitution of the state and could not be legally abolished ; but where a circuit embraced two or more counties a new circuit could be created out of the counties detached from the old one, and the governor would appoint a judge who resided in the new circuit to act until his successor was elected and quali- fied. This will account for the great number of judges holding the cir- cuit in White county. No resident judge had been elected from the organization of the county in 1834 until the election of Judge Reynolds
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in 1888. In the interim our judges had been provided for us, either by election or appointment, from the counties of Warren, Tippecanoe, Carroll, Cass, Miami and Jasper. At one time our circuit extended from the eastern line of Miami county to the state line on the west, and north to the north line of Pulaski county. Now there are four circuits, and part of a fifth, covering the same territory."
REYNOLDS, FIRST WHITE COUNTY JUDGE
Judge Reynolds was in his twentieth year when Monticello and White County first knew him as an earnest law student whose course was di- rected by David Turpie. He was a native of Somerset, Ohio, born Sep- tember 16, 1839, coming to Monticello in 1856. He attended Wabash and Monmouth colleges two years as a preparation for his legal studies, and after his admission to the bar practiced for a short time at Winamac, but soon returned to Monticello, where within a few years he had secured a high-class and lucrative clientele.
As warmly sketched by a long-time friend at the time of his death in his seventy-fifth year, after he had secured so firm a hold upon the respect, admiration and affection of all: "Judge Reynolds had many traits of character which drew and held friends and contributed to his success at the bar. He was in love with his profession and seemed to enjoy the work which it entailed. He not only mastered every detail of his cases, but he made his client's cause his own, and was ready to fight for him if need be. At the same time he was not exorbitant in the matter of fees and was kindly discriminating in favor of the poor. Faults he had, but ingratitude was not one of them. He never forgot a friend, nor was he prone to cherish malice against an enemy. For his fearless- ness, his determination and his singleness of purpose in the pursuit of one of the highest callings that engage the human intellect, he will he remembered by his profession far and near."
FORGOT HE WAS JUDGE
Mr. Reynolds was judge of the White County Circuit Court from 1888 to 1894 and discharged his duties well; but he was primarily an advocate and at least one instance is related, which occurred during the first year of his judgeship, illustrating that fact. The case of Dickey vs. Garrigan, by change of venue from Pulaski County, was before him in December, 1888. The judge was uneasily watching the maneuvers by which counsel for the defendant were endeavoring to introduce indirectly a piece of incompetent testimony that the court had once ruled out. When at last the main question, which was clearly irrelevant, was put, the words were hardly out of the lawyer's mouth before Judge Rey- nolds, carried away by the instincts of the veteran advocate, lost his judicial consciousness and shouted from the bench "We object !" A burst of laughter from jury, bar and witnesses at once recalled the judge
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to a realization of his position, who added, almost in the same breath, "And the Court sustains the objection."
At the conclusion of his six years on the Circuit bench, Mr. Rey- nolds resumed his beloved practice, in which he continued to be actively engaged until stricken by his last illness a few months before his death at his home in Monticello, on the 27th of April, 1913.
TRUMAN F. PALMER
Truman F. Palmer succeeded Judge Reynolds in 1894 and continued on the Circuit Bench until 1906. He is a son of Rev. Truman F. Palmer, A. M., and Plumea (Perry) Palmer, M. E. L. The father was a graduate of Allegheny College (about) 1847, and the parents were married at Meadville, Pennsylvania, the same year. They came to Indiana and the father was attached, as a minister, to the Indiana conference, as a member of which body he preached at Fort Wayne and other places until January 17, 1851, when he died, while in charge of the church at Orland, Indiana, aged about twenty-six years. The mother lived until May 23, 1900, and passed away at Burnettsville, in White County, where she had lived most of the time since her husband's death. There were two children : Emma, a widow, who resides with her brother, Truman F., in Monticello. She was for many years a teacher in the Monticello schools. The mother was well educated and had excellent literary taste. She was a writer of considerable note in her younger days, but gave up her ambitions in order that she might rear and educate her children. She was a teacher of English for many years in the old Thorntown Academy, which was one of the prominent schools of the Methodist Episcopal Church during, and for a long time after the Civil war. Of her it is said by resolution of her church, which is inscribed on a memorial window of the church building at Burnettsville, as follows: "She has woven her noble influence for good into the lives and characters of more people in this community than any other person who ever lived in it." .
Truman F. Palmer (2nd) was born at Orland, Steuben County, Indiana, on the 7th day of January, 1851, and three years thereafter came with his mother to White County, where (his boyhood at Burnettsville) his home has been most of the time since. He was educated, in a very irregular way, at Battle Ground Institute, Thorntown Academy, Farmer's Institute, at Clinton, Indiana, and Indiana University, and his profes- sional preparation was at the last named institution. After graduating in the law, he was for four years deputy clerk of the Circuit Court of White County, and thereafter (July 5, 1879) he opened a law office at Monticello. Since that time he has been engaged in the practice except for an interval of twelve years, from 1894 to November, 1906, during which time he served, by two successive elections, as judge of the Thirty- ninth Judicial Circuit. He was president of the Indiana State Bar Association in 1904-05, and was a delegate from the American Bar Asso- ciation to the International Bar Association in 1904.
He is a thirty-third degree Mason, crowned at Boston in September,
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1904, and is at present one of two members from Indiana of the very im- portant Committee on Charitable Foundation of the Supreme Council. He has been since November, 1906, a member of the legal firm of Palmer & Carr, composed of himself and Mayor Benjamin F. Carr. Politics, republican.
JAMES P. WASON
James P. Wason was born September 26, 1867, in Toledo, Ohio. He was the son of Robert A. and Gertrude L. Wason (nee Freleigh) and came to Delphi, Indiana, September 24, 1881, with his parents; attended the common schools at Toledo, including the eighth grade and graduated from the Delphi High School in May, 1885; studied law for a short time with the firm of Applegate & Pollard and then entered the store of Bolles & Wason in Delphi in 1887, where he was employed until the fall of 1894, when he went to Ann Arbor and entered the law department of the University of Michigan, graduating from there with the degree of LL. B. in June, 1896; while at Ann Arbor was assistant law librarian for the purpose of partially defraying his expenses; formed a partnership with John H. Cartwright in 1896, under the firm name of Cartwright & Wason, which lasted until his elevation to the bench. Was attorney for the board of commissioners of Carroll County in 1903-1904. Was elected judge of the Thirty-ninth Judicial Circuit, composed of Carroll and White counties, in November, 1906, by a majority of forty-one and was re-elected in 1912, by a majority of 1,315; is a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church and also a member of Mt. Olive Lodge, F. & A. M., No. 48; Delphi Chapter, R. A. M., No. 21; Monticello Council, No. 70, R. & S. M .; Delphi Commandery, K. T., No. 40; Delphi Lodge, K. of P., No. 80; Delphi Company U. R. K. of P., No. 86, and Tippecanoe Tribe, I. O. R. M., No. 505. In politics is a democrat.
THE PROBATE JUDGES
Like the old-time associates of the circuit judges and the justices of the peace, the probate judges of White County were "homey" men, often citizens of simple common-sense without legal knowledge or many other intellectual qualifications. Yet they were generally classed as "honorables" and invariably claimed the title of judge.
ROBERT NEWELL
Robert Newell, the first probate judge, who was appointed by Gover- nor Noble in 1835, was an honest, popular Big Creek farmer, and served until the general election in August, when he resigned from the bench to accept a nomination for state representative. Judge Newell is de- scribed as a jolly, unassuming man, and quite regardless of personal appearances. He would often come into court barefoot and coatless, with the merest excuse for a hat, and if the docket showed no business
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would adjourn court, and join the boys in a game of quoits, or in jump- ing, wrestling and any other sport at hand. If any business turned up he would enter into its disposal with the same zest as marked his partici- pation in the sports of the villagers.
WILLIAM M. KENTON
Mr. Newell was succeeded by William M. Kenton, son of the famous frontiersman and Indian fighter of Kentucky and himself one of the largest landowners and most prosperous cattlemen in the state. In his youth he had been well educated at West Point, married early and soon afterward brought his wife and child from Logan County, Ohio, to what was then Big Creek Township, Carroll County. That was in the fall of 1832, and Mr. Kenton selected for his homestead a tract of land three miles west of the present site of Monticello. In 1851 he moved to Honey Creek Township, where he died, April 30, 1869, his widow following him on the 3d of July, 1881. They were the parents of ten children and many of their descendants of the third and fourth generations are still living in the county.
Mr. Kenton was a man of far more education and dignity than his predecessor in the probate judgeship, although most of his life since his youth had been spent amid outdoor scenes of primitive life in what was then the western frontier. But he tired of his judicial dignities in about a year and returned to his farm a few miles west of the Tippecanoe River. It was while living there that Mr. Turpie met him, not long after locating at Monticello in 1849. "The best known citizen of the county at that time," he says, "was William Miller Kenton, a son of Simon Kenton, the far-famed Indian fighter and hunter of Kentucky. His early youth had been spent on the farm and in attending his father in his numerous excursions in search of lands and game. The Indians where they lived then gave little trouble. After the age of sixteen the friends of his father, who were quite influential, including all the elder congressmen and senators from his state, procured for young Kenton a commission in the navy. Disliking this employment, after a brief service as midshipman with the home squadron in the gulf, he resigned. The same friends obtained for him an appointment to the military academy at West Point, then a very primitive institution. Young Kenton here excelled in the drill and manual of arms and in all athletic sports and exercises ; but with books he failed, not from any lack of mental ability, but from his innate aversion to regular study and application. After a certain time spent at the academy, he was honorably relieved from fur- ther attendance, went home, married and, with considerable means derived from his parental estate and other sources, removed to what was then Carroll, later White county, bought large tracts of government land, and was among the first settlers of the Grand Prairie.
"When I first knew him Kenton lived on a farm of a thousand acres on what was called the Range Line, in the open prairie about four miles west from the Tippecanoe River, and owned another plantation of two
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thousand acres not far away. His house was a large one, a frame of two stories. Here he dispensed a profuse hospitality ; no one was ever turned away from his door. Whites and Indians were equally welcome. His Indian visitors were frequent, for he had settled in the county some time before their removal by the government to their new home in the West. Some of these guests had seen and known his father; they loved the son for the father's sake, yet their attachment may have been partly due to the well stored pantry and kitchen which ministered to their wants.
"Besides farming, Kenton was largely engaged in rearing cattle and live stock for the market, and among other things he gave much of his time and attention to the prosecution of certain land claims located in Kentucky, which he had inherited from his father's estate.
"The younger Kenton was a man of considerable reading and infor- mation, fond of the chase, a notable wrestler, runner and boxer, surpass- ing most of his contemporaries in these exercises ; but he was a person of exceeding equable temper, and resorted not to force or violence save under extreme provocation. He, like his father, had lived in his youth so much among the Indians as to have contracted somewhat of their habits. He was of a firm step, with a decided military bearing, yet inclined to the Indian gait. His eyes were large and brilliant, constantly in the attitude of expectancy, as if watching or awaiting some one. He was in politics a zealous Whig, a personal friend and a steadfast adherent of Henry Clay, who had also known and befriended his father in days of yore.
"As the representative of a district composed of a group of our northern counties, of which White was one, he had served, with much acceptance to his constituents for several sessions in the general assem- bly ; he was a close friend and ally of Albert S. White, and in the Whig caucus, it is said, had placed that gentleman's name in nomination for United States senator when he was chosen to that position. Kenton's conversation was very interesting, especially when it related to the life and adventures of his father.
"Mr. Kenton was a very careful herdsman and feeder, a better judge of live stock than of the market. He often made unfortunate sales, and as his transactions were on a large scale, met with serious losses. Toward the close of his life, in his old age, he fell into some pecuniary embarrassment. His creditors came in a cloud, all at once, to summon him with writs of indebtedness. The old pioneer made a gallant fight. Some of them he paid, with others he settled, many of them he defeated, and two or three of the most insolent claimants he literally whipped into terms of submission. He saved a large portion of his real estate and, though he did not long survive his campaign in the courts, spent his last days in comfortable competency and died in peace with all the world. His memory is yet highly respected, even fondly cherished, by the descendants of the friends and neighbors with . whom he formerly associated, and whom he had often aided in the struggles of their early life on the frontier."
With most of his family he was buried in the old Kenton graveyard.
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about five miles southwest of Monticello, but about thirty years ago their remains were disinterred and deposited in the old cemetery at Monticello. The old-fashioned tombstones were left in the original burial ground, where they may still be seen.
ZEBULON SHEETZ AND AARON HICKS
When Mr. Kenton resigned after his year's service as probate judge, Zebulon Sheetz was elected to succeed him. He was also one of the pioneers of the county, as were usually the occupants of the probate bench, and was a mild, dignified Virginian, who firmly suppressed any levity in court, either on the part of attorneys or laymen. He and Judge Newell were as different as honest dirt and pure snow.
Mr. Sheetz was succeeded, after a creditable service of four years by Aaron Hicks, who had come into the Wabash country as one of a colony of Ohio emigrants as early as 1825, first settling near the mouth of Rock Creek, in what is now Grant County. He had lived there for several years among the Miami Indians and a sprinkling of white people, until he migrated still westward beyond the Wabash into White County. He was also an advocate of decorum, and bears the reputation of a man who was rather timid in the maintenance of his own opinion, or, better still, of one who was anxious to correct an opinion when the evidence showed that he was in the wrong. Judge Hicks served for six years, or until the office was legislated out of existence.
Altogether the probate judges of the county, although selected from the unprofessional, were men of integrity and fair practical ability.
COURT OF COMMON PLEAS AGAIN
When the Court of Common Pleas became an established fact, under the legislative act of May, 1852, a legal and a higher order of talents was demanded. By that act the state was divided into thirty-eight judicial districts, in each of which a judge was chosen at the succeeding election to hold the office for four years. As stated, it absorbed the Probate Court and relieved the Circuit Court of its minor business concerning both civil and criminal actions.
SAMUEL A. HUFF
Samuel A. Huff, the first of the common pleas judges, entered office at the January term of 1853, his district comprising Tippecanoe and White counties. Then, and for many years afterward, he was a resident of Lafayette, although he spent the last of his life in Monticello with his son, William J. Huff, of the Monticello Herald. In his early manhood, Judge Huff himself had been connected with several Indiana newspapers. Born at Greenville, South Carolina, on the 11th of October, 1811, he settled at Indianapolis in his nineteenth year and entered the counting room of the Indiana Agriculturist; in 1832 he became a printer in the
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