USA > Maryland > Genealogical and memorial encyclopedia of the state of Maryland, a record of the achievements of her people in the making of a commonwealth and the founding of a nation, Volume I > Part 15
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Mr. Poe was a great master of our profession, but he was more than an eminent lawyer, he was the codifier of our whole body of statute law -public general and public local, as well as of the ordinances of the City Council of Baltimore. He was the draftsman of many forms in legislation, and a legal author of note. His books have been of inestimable value to the profession. There is in our State no practitioner, even of the smallest pretentions, and no judge who does not keep his works on pleading and prac- tice at hand, and refer to them constantly. For many years he was one of the school commissioners of Baltimore City, a city counsellor, a member of various tax commissions, served in the State Senate, and was attorney-general of Maryland from 1891 to 1895. No record of his life, however brief, would be complete without reference to his well-known party fealty. He was a life-long Democrat, advocating the election of candidates of that party, and supporting its measures when many did not; he believed in party government, and while he recognized the existence of public evils and the necessity for reform, he thought this could best be secured within the party lines, not from any personal motives-for he gave his party more than he ever received from it-but because he thought the supremacy of the party was for the interest of the State. In political contests he was a fre- quent and an effective public speaker, and as is not unusually the case,
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was at times the target of severe and much unjust denunciation. This he accepted with equanimity, and never did a public man bear so little resent. ment. His connection with Maryland University is especially interesting. It was here that for forty years he did his great work as a teacher. The story of the Law School before he became associated with it is soon told. A Law Faculty was first constituted and annexed to this university in 1813. * No school of instruction in which lectures were given to students was opened until 1823. This ceased in 1836, and in 1869 the surviving members of the Law Faculty, Messrs. George W. Dobbin and John H. B. Latrobe, determined that the time had come to revive the School of Law. They selected Messrs. George William Brown, Bernard Carter, H. Clay Dallam and John Prentiss Poe to fill the existing vacancies in their faculty. The first course of instruction began on the first Monday in February, 1870, with twenty students in attendance, and continued till the summer vacation. From the time of his election to the Law Faculty, Mr. Poe was the leading spirit in the reorganized Law School, carrying to the close of his life the great burden of the work. In the fall of 1870 he offered to give a course of lectures on Pleading and Practice at Law, and his offer was gladly accepted. His entire course of lectures upon the two branches assigned to him was delivered at night for a whole scholastic year, to a class sometimes as small as three, and never larger than seven, and without compensation. Mr. Poe had, however, entered upon the task convinced that the interest of his profession required the establishment and maintenance of a law school of high order in this State, and his enthusiasm was un- daunted. After many years of faithful work, always preserving the same courage and taking the same interest as at the beginning, he beheld the school grow, largely as the result of his own attractive personality, and his capacity as a lecturer and teacher, until it became recognized as one of the important institutions of learning in the commonwealth, both by the reason of the number of its graduates, and the influence it has exerted in raising the standard of legal education. Its graduates up to the present time number over thirteen hundred. All of these came under his teaching, and it may be justly said that no man in his generation has so deeply touched and moulded the life of the bar. He was the friend of the students, and ever ready to share with them his knowledge and experience, and in the concern with which he watched them enter upon their professional careers and the delight with which he welcomed their successes was exhibited that paternal solicitude which endeared him so strongly to the student body and to the alumni as a whole.
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Mr. Poe was not content to be a good lecturer. He desired to im- part knowledge to his students in a permanent form. This led him first to print a syllabus of his lectures on Pleading and Practice. This was followed by the preparation of his comprehensive work on "Pleading and Practice in the Courts of Common Law." The first volume "Pleading" appeared in 1880, the second volume on "Practice" was published in 1882, and the fourth and last edition of this invaluable treatise appeared in 1896. Mr. Poe was made dean of the Law Faculty on the death of the venerable George W. Dobbin, in 1884. But his activities were not confined to the Law School. As a member of the Board of Regents, every department of the university engaged his attention. There was no movement for its development that did not have his sympathy and co-operation. At the meetings of the board, of which he was long the secretary, his attendance could always be counted on. If there was work to be done he never avoided it. In all the years I have known him, I have never heard him urge the excuse that he was too busy to undertake a task that fell to his lot. He would sleep a few hours less and work a few hours more-that was all. Fortunately, he had a strong constitution and his capacity for work was almost incredible. He was so ready and capable that it was natural to turn to him, and he would not only do what he was asked to do, but do it uncomplainingly and well. If legislation was required to add a new depart- ment, or to expand the chartered powers of the university, he was at hand to draw the necessary bill. If an orator was desired for a commencement occasion, who could so well conduct the necessary correspondence? His as- sociations with his colleagues were of the most delightful kind. Envy was absolutely foreign to his generous nature. He rejoiced in every honor which they won, and the meetings of a social character in which they participated in common were made memorable by his vivacity and general wit.
Turning for a moment from his public to his private life, we find a devoted son, husband, father and brother, and a staunch friend. To work unsparingly of himself for those he loved was to him a pleasure. If I were asked to sum up the principal characteristics of his life I should say activity, industry, integrity, devotion to his family, devotion to his pro- fession, devotion to the Law School of this University, devotion to his party, cheerfulness of spirit and conscientious performance of duty in every station of life to which it pleased God to call him, were dominant. His was a long life. More than three score years and ten, and a full life lived nobly and in the fear of God. The end was not unfitting. He labored to
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the last. His step may not have been quite so quick, his heart action not quite so strong, but his eye was as bright, his smile as sweet, his presence as cheery, his hand-clasp as warm as ever when we last saw him, and he retained all his alertness, mental vigor and happy disposition.
All the sons were graduates of Princeton, all dis- tinguished as football players, and all of the survivors now occupying prominent and successful positions in life. The third son, John Prentiss Poe, being possessed of a spirit of adventure, lost his life, September 25, 1915, while fighting under the British colors at the battle of Loos. He was a gentleman, first and last, but could not settle down to the easy life of the metropolis. The force which enabled him to win many football games for Princeton led him wherever there was adventure to be had. He found this in the rough mining camps of the western frontier, in the snowy wilder- ness in Alaska, in the swamps of Cuba, and in the Philippine jungles; in torrid Nicaragua, and at last under the crimson banner of England, floating over the shrapnel-torn trenches "somewhere in France." Soon after graduating from col- lege he went to Nevada, where he soon joined the mounted police of the State. On one occasion he led the mounted police into a stronghold of desperate cattle thieves and cap- tured the gang at the point of a pistol. Men soon learned to know that he could be relied upon. While prospecting in the western gold fields he made a trip to the famous Death Valley, in New Mexico. Subsequently he became a member of the governmental expedition which surveyed the boundaries between Alaska and British Columbia. When war was de- clared between Spain and the United States, he returned to Baltimore, and enlisted in the Fifth Maryland Regiment. He then joined the Sixteenth Infantry Regiment, with which he went to the Philippines. In 1903 he enlisted in the Ken- tucky State militia, and was ordered to service in the moun-
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tains. He enlisted in Marine Corps at headquarters, Wash- ington, D. C., December 24th, 1903. Was promoted same date to sergeant. Transferred to Marine Barracks, League Island, same date. Served in Panama until discharged at Washington, D. C., "upon settlement of accounts," February 27th, 1904, as a sergeant with character "excellent." In the war between Honduras and Nicaragua in 1907, he was com- missioned a captain of infantry in the Honduras army, and gained special distinction at the siege of Amapal. In the fol- lowing year he participated in the filibustering expedition against Castro, the dictator of Venezuela. In September, 1914, he sailed for England, and soon enlisted as a private in the heavy artillery. In June, 1915, he secured a transfer to the Black Watch, the famous Scottish Highlanders Regi- ment, which has been distinguished in battlefields throughout the world. In speaking of his death, Samuel McCoy, of the Philadelphia "Public Ledger" of November 14, 1915, said: "In the report received from the British War Office, no de- tails of his death were given-only the date, September 25, 1915. It is believed, however, from the terms of a letter writ- ten by a captain in the Black Watch, that his death came as the Black Watch charged the German lines with the fury of demons, and with the thrilling music of the bagpipes lead- ing them on to glory. But all the Princeton men who knew Johnny know that he must have died as he lived-a man to whom gentleness was a creed and yet one to whom the call to heroic deeds sounded as compelling as it did to the knight- errants of old. So he must have died, fearless as he was on the football field, merry as he was in his last words: 'I trust i shall be on hand at the next round-up to tell you how the play came up. I looks toward you all and also bows. I also hopes I catches your eye?' "
JOHN S. ENSOR
THE late John S. Ensor, lawyer and philanthropist, was was a man whose universal good will and benevolence toward all mankind were evinced during his entire lifetime. By that very element in his character was he brought to meet his death, October 27, 1915. While on his way from Arling- ton, Maryland, to Govans, to attend a political mass meeting at which he was to be the principal speaker, an accident oc- curred in which a man was injured, and while hurrying to secure aid for him, Mr. Ensor was struck and killed by a trolley car, and thus was ended a career of activity and use- fulness.
John S. Ensor was born May 28, 1868, at Towson, and received his early education in the public school of his native place, where his early life was passed. He was enthusiastic and active in all out-door sport and recreation. He graduated from Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, as honor man and orator of his class, in 1888, and was graduated at the Maryland University Law School in 1890. At the age of twenty-two he engaged in the practice of law in Baltimore, and applied himself with such diligence and ability that he was appointed assistant United States district attorney at Baltimore at the age of twenty-three. He entered upon the duties of this position with enthusiasm, and conducted impor- tant trials in both the lower and appellate federal courts. He was ever a student and continually strived to keep in touch with everything that pertained to his profession, and in an active practice of twenty-five years built up a very thriving business and was popular with members of the bar and the courts. His cases were always tried with ability and courtesy, and he enjoyed the sincere esteem of all who were privileged to know him. At a very early period he began to manifest
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an interest in the public welfare and especially in the promo- tion of the interest of future citizens in the person of the boys about him. He was very much interested in the Boy Scouts, for some time had been a scoutmaster and was one of the most energetic and enthusiastic in this movement. It was very natural that he should be called to the public service, for he was ever the friend of the people, and the unrelenting foe of corruption in public life. In 1895 he was nominated by the Baltimore County Republicans for State's attorney, in a convention which was torn by factional troubles. He sur- mounted all difficulties and received a handsome majority, being the first Republican to be elected as State's attorney since the Civil War. It is said his service as prosecuting officer was vigorous, and his work and methods won him many friends. After retiring from the office of State's attorney, Mr. Ensor continued to manifest an interest in public affairs and to labor for the promotion of good government. He had been particularly earnest in the advocacy of good roads, and was an earnest worker in behalf of neighborhood improvement associations. He was one of the leaders in the fight against the Mount Washington sewerage deal, which has been a scandal in the political history of his home city. As a trustee of Mount Washington Presbyterian Church he was active in promoting the moral works of that body. His broad mind and generous spirit were demonstrated in his affiliation with numerous prilanthropic and benevolent orders, including the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Junior Order of United Mechanics, the Masonic Fraternity, and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, of which organiza- tions he was an active worker. He was for many years a member of the Baltimore Country Club and the Mount Wash- ington Club. In all these organizations he took a leading posi- tion and filled various important official stations. His breadth
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and fairness are indicated by his advocacy of non-partisan judicial election, and with other broad-minded Republicans he urged the support of Judges Burke and Duncan, who were Democratic nominees. While he was earnest and faithful in support of his principles, he believed in good men and good government before partisan advantage. In the fall of 1915 he was the nominee of his district for State Senator, and his fellow candidates adopted the following resolutions of respect and condolence :
Whereas, an Allwise but to a mysterious Providence has permitted death to invade our county and to remove from our midst John S. Ensor, one of its most highly respected citizens,
Resolved, Therefore, by his surviving colleagues of the Republican county ticket that they mourn the loss of him whose noble qualities of mind and heart have endeared him to his fellow men.
Resolved, That in his death the State has sustained the loss of one of its most loyal and devoted sons; and that his fidelity to principle and ideal standard of citizenship should be an inspiration to those who live after him.
A newspaper said of him:
Mr. Ensor's fight for the taxpayers against the Mount Washington sewerage deal, and his splendid campaign for the judgeship in the fall of 1914, in which he carried this formerly strongly Democratic county and was only defeated by a few votes excess majority for his opponent in Hartford county, are all well-known and recent matters. He was a foremost advocate of good roads and had much to do with the movement which has put this county so far to the front in this line. He was a patriot to the core, loving the country, its flag and all its traditions. He was a devoted friend to boys and was earnest in all efforts to make them better and more useful citizens, being prominent in the Boy Scouts' activities.
The character of Mr. Ensor is aptly and beautifully ex- pressed in the following account from "The Sun" of Balti- more :
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A high tribute was paid yesterday to the memory of the late John S. Ensor by the judges of the Circuit Court for Baltimore county and the members of the bar at a memorial meeting in the courtroom at Towson. Resolutions of respect as prepared by a committee composed of States's Attorney George Hartman, William M. Lawrence and T. Scott Offutt were read by Mr. Hartman and ordered spread on the minutes of the court and a copy sent to the family. Judges N. Charles Burke, Frank I. Duncan and Allan McClane were on the bench. After the addresses of the members of the bar, Judge Burke, speaking for the court, said in part: "The court fully concurs in what has been so well and justly said of Mr. Ensor in the reso- lutions read and in the remarks of gentlemen of the bar. His death was so pathetic, so inexpressibly sad as to touch the hearts of the whole people of the county. It is fitting that his professional brethren, who stood in close relationship and association with him, should meet in this room which witnessed his most arduous labors, the scene of his triumphs and disap- pointments, to pay a just and affectionate tribute to his memory. Mr. Ensor was not a great or profound lawyer, but he was more than a mere lawyer. He had a combination of qualities which attracted and attached to him a vast number of his fellow citizens. His genial nature, his kindliness and warm-heartedness endeared him to the people generally and secured for him a great personal popularity. In his private life he was clean, upright and above reproach and stood for the best things of life; his professional career was honorable, and characterized by fidelity to all the interests com- mitted to his charge. His impulses were generous, and in the discharge of his public and private responsibilties he was actuated by high motives." The United States Court at Baltimore also adjourned in respect to the memory of Mr. Ensor, who was formerly assistant district attorney.
Following are newspaper editorial tributes to Mr. Ensor :
The tragic and untimely death of Mr. Ensor, Republican candidate for the State Senate, in the very prime of vigorous manhood has shocked and saddened the people of this county. For years Mr. Ensor had been a part of its public life, widely known to the people for his interest in their civic and social welfare. Notwithstanding the call of his profession and the many demands of a full and active life, he always found time for earnest and useful endeavor in matters relating to the welfare and social betterment of his fellows.
Devotedly attached to children, he took a prominent place in the Boy
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Scout movement. He believed it had an effective influence for training boys to be truthful, manly, self-reliant and obedient, and his death will be mourned by none more deeply than by his little friends-the boys.
His energy and simple manliness, his buoyant and cheery good nature and his ready and sincere sympathy endeared him to thousands of friends who will long remember and long miss the bright, ringing and infectious laughter which was one of the many characteristics of "Johnny" Ensor.
The following beautiful tribute is extrated from an article entitled "Here Was a Man":
As he lived, so he died. Throughout his life he had striven for the welfare of mankind, with a big heart overflowing with kindness and hands and feet active to carry out the promptings of his helpful nature. At the moment when he was stricken he was in the act of seeking to administer aid to a fellow being, regardless of the fact that his own important affairs were waiting. All who knew him deplore what seems to us his untimely removal from among us, but although the future held bright promise of high honor and even increased usefulness for him, his career could not have been more consistently closed had he lived for a century. We will realize this more fully after the fresh poignancy of our shock and grief has passed.
Mr. Ensor married Irma Risley, of Philadelphia, and left besides his widow, two young sons, John S., Jr., and Risley.
ROBERT HENRY SMITH
FOR forty-seven years an honored member of the Balti- more bar, and recognized as the most eminent exponent of Admiralty law connected with that bar, it is not as the learned lawyer, nor the financier, that he was best known to thousands of Baltimorans, but as the superintendent of the Sunday school of the Second Presbyterian Church for forty-seven years, and as an elder of that church for nearly half a century. At a memorial meeting of the bench and bar, held in his honor, United States District Attorney Samuel K. Dennis, in presenting the memorial resolution, character- ized Mr. Smith as a soldier, a teacher and lawyer, whose life was blameless, who had "less original sin than any of us and more charity than most of us." "His most lasting success," said Mr. Dennis, "was outside the law and lay in the good he did." Former Judge Alfred S. Niles, once a law student in Mr. Smith's office, said that on one occasion Mr. Smith said to him: "If I had to choose between my practice and my work in church and Sunday school, I should not hesitate an instant to give up my practice." Said Daniel H. Hayne in part: "Mr. Smith's precept and example were constant in- centives toward the best efforts of those with whom he came in contact and still survives him, an active force for good."
Mr. Smith's ancestry on both sides was Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from the north of Ireland, who settled in York county, Pennsylvania, some of them coming in time to engage in the second war with Great Britain, 1812-14. He was a son of Robert and Sarah (Ross) Smith of Chanceford, York county, Pennsylvania. His father was a farmer and merchant, deeply interested in public affairs, and a loyal Presbyterian. Of his early life at home Mr. Smith once said: "Though raised on the Shorter Catechism my early life was not made irksome, but most happy."
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Robert Henry Smith was born at the homestead in Lower Chanceford township, York county, Pennsylvania, December 1, 1845, and seventy-two years later, on October 9, 1917, died in the house in which he was born. His brother, Samuel, resides in the old homestead, and Robert H. was there con- valescing after a severe illness at his Baltimore home, No. 1230 North Calvert street. He grew to manhood at the home farm, attended good schools, and remained at home under the influence of a good mother, his whole after-life being a tribute to that strong beneficial influence. He attended public schools until the age of fourteen, then attended York Academy until his enlistment in July, 1864, in the 194th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, serving one hundred days. After receiving an honorable discharge he returned home, entered Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, there con- tinuing until graduated A.B., class of 1867, A.M., 1870. In the winter of 1862 he taught a term in the public schools and after graduation he taught one year in York Academy, al- though his intention all through his college years had been to prepare for the medical profession. But he met with little encouragement from his friends, and some opposition, and during the year at York Academy, he decided to study law. In 1868 he began to study law in Baltimore, Maryland. Two years later he was admitted to the bar, September, 1870, and at once began practice in that city. He was very ambitious, and in selecting a branch of the profession, in which to spe- cialize, chose Admiralty law, a branch of the profession in which he became famous. He acquired a wide and accurate knowledge of Admiralty law, served a very large clientele of marine merchants and shipowners, and was a recognized authority. His genial, affable manner, uprightness and in- tegrity, were equally important factors in his success; men liking and respecting him for his virtues as well as for his
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professional skill and ability. Said his friend, Mayor Randolph Bailton, at the memorial meeting previously re- ferred to: "I do not hesitate to say that there is hardly a man in the whole country who stood in the front rank with a greater right on the question of character, and on the point of setting an example of how a man could go through all the vicissitudes of business-money-making if you please to call it so-and yet come out stainless." At the same meeting Judge Rose responding for the bench said : "For many years he was the undisputed leader of the admiralty bar of this court. He probably seldom thought evil of any one until the evidence of such a person's conduct was absolutely conclusive. He certainly never gave expression to any such thought if he entertained it. Very many men and women have been better men and women because they came in early life under the influence of Robert H. Smith. I wonder after all, if any other work we can do really lasts so long and counts for so much." Such was his career at the bar and such the estimation in which he was held by his brethren of the bar. In addi- tion to the demands of a larger practice he was a professor of Admiralty Federal Procedure and Legal Ethics at Baltimore Law School, 1900-1910; was appointed a member of the Court House Commission in 1893, that Commission having in charge the erection of a City Court House; in 1893 he be- came a member of the Board of Trustees of the McDonough School, and in 1907 was chosen president of the Board. He knew nearly every boy in the school and some of them he aided in establishing themselves as prosperous business men and financiers. In 1896 he was elected president of the Board of Supervisors of Election for the city of Baltimore, and in 1904 he was chosen a member of Tome Institute, at Port Deposit, Maryland. Other philanthropies which received the benefit of his interest and legal knowledge were the Presby- MD .- 14
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