USA > Michigan > Bench and bar of Michigan : a volume of history and biography > Part 3
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
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the profession. He is known as an able trial lawyer, and his business sagacity has made him valued as a counsellor. He is engaged in gen- eral practice and various causes argued by him will be found in the reports of the Supreme Court of Michigan, the Federal Courts of the Sixth Cir- cuit and the Supreme Court of the United States. He is broadly cul- tured, of wide and varied reading, particularly in the fields of English and American history and literature. He has one of the largest and best selected private libraries in the state, said to contain more than 5,000 vol- umes. He was married in May, 1876, to Leonora I. Drake, of Fort Wayne, Indiana. They have four children. ITis domestic and social attachments are the strongest. While Mr. Butterfield's life has been give to the practice of his profession, he has not been indifferent to mat- ters affecting the public welfare. He has been the firm and consistent friend of both common school and higher education. In 1887, he was elected one of the Regents of the University of Michigan, an office for which his scholarship and talents as a man of affairs fit him most admira- bly. In 1895 at the expiration of his first term of service as regent he was nominated by acclamation by the Republican State Convention for a second term in the same office and was elected thereto at the spring elec- tion of that year. Politically he is a Republican, although the field of politics has never tempted him to turn aside from the professional life upon which he entered nearly thirty years ago. He is possessed of public spirit and has been identified with many enterprises which tend to promote the interests of the community. Ile is connected as director or stockholder with many of the most important industrial and financial institutions of Grand Rapids.
MOSES TAGGART, Grand Rapids. Moses Taggart, one of the leading lawyers of Kent county, was born at Wilson, Niagara county, New York, February 27, 1843. His ancestors were men of character, ability, educa- tion and resources. His great-grandfather, James Taggart, emigrated from Ireland to America in boyhood and settled in Londonderry, New Hampshire. His grandfather, Samuel Taggart, a native of Londonderry, was born about the middle of the last century, was graduated from Dart- mouth at twenty, and licensed to preach in the Presbyterian Church during the year that the American colonies declared their independence of British domination. Samuel Taggart was for many years pastor of the Presbyter- ian Church of Colerain, Massachusetts, where he died in 1825. He served fourteen years as a member of Congress from a district in the State of Massachusetts, having been first elected in 1802 as a Federalist. While at Washington he became the intimate friend of the great Chief Justice, John Marshall. He was a man of large abilities and retentive memory; a powerful speaker and a writer of recognized force on religious subjects, as
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well as political topics. Moses Taggart is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, by virtue of his maternal grandfather, Ichabod Cone's enlistment and service, both in the State of Connecticut and New York, in the Continental army. Hewas educated at the Collegiate Institute at Wilson, New York, and afterwards studied law in the office of his uncle, Judge Moses Taggart, ex-judge of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals of New York, who lived at Batavia. In selecting the University of Michigan as the place in which he should complete his preparation for the practice of law, he was doubtless influenced by the inclination to come west for a location before engaging in practice. IIe might have gone to Columbia Law School, in the City of New York, which was much older and at that time in the zenith of its fame, under the presidency of Dr. Dwight ; but he preferred the law school of the University, even though it had been established only eight years. He was graduated from this school in 1867 and admitted to the Bar of New York State at Buffalo the same year. He moved to Michigan in 1868 and located for a short time at Cedar Springs, but finally settled at Grand Rapids. In the practice of law at Grand Rapids, he was first associated with B. A. Harlan and Eugene E. Allen. Since 1875 he has been in partnership with L. W. Wolcott, and the firm is now Taggart, Wolcott and Ganson. Mr. Taggart has been elected Attorney General of Michigan twice and filled the office with exceptional ability and perfect faithfulness. During his exercise of the functions of this office he formed the acquaintance of the Bar generally throughout the State and won the respect of all by his candor, courtesy and impartiality. His conduct was regulated by a high standard of morality and a keen sensibility of the importance and sometimes delicacy of the official duties imposed upon him. He was frequently called upon to explain or construe statutes in advance of any judicial expression upon the same, and he established the reputation of preparing his opinions thereon conscientiously and expressing his views with unusual clearness. The law has engaged his attention absolutely since he first engaged in the practice, and he has uni- formly exhibited ability, industry and skill as a practitioner. He is a man of strong convictions, which have due weight in his management of cases. Ilis arguments are characterized by a directness which reaches and influ- ences the minds of the jury. His perception is quick and he is a tactician of rare diplomacy. He is therefore a successful practitioner, favored with a large clientage. Mr. Taggart's friendship is marked by a sincerity and firmness which always command respect. His christianity is of the practi- cal sort which affects the daily life and conversation. In the relations of society and citizenship he aims to be guided as nearly as possible by the Golden Rule. He was married October 17, 1872, to Miss Lillie Ganson, of Ypsilanti. His children are Ganson, Ralph C., James M., Van Cleve and Anna.
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WILLIAM D. FULLER, Grand Rapids. Hon. William D. Fuller is Reporter of the Supreme Court of Michigan. He was born at Chardon, Geauga county, Ohio, September 3, 1840. His primary education was obtained in the common schools of Michigan; his higher education at Hiram College, Ohio, of which James A. Garfickl was president. The associations of this school, perhaps lightly regarded at the time, have become a hallowed memory through the election of its president to be president of the United States and his subsequent martyrdom. William D, was the third son of Edson Fuller and Celira Canfield. His father was a native of Cazenovia, New York, born in 1809-the year which produced so many illustrious men, including Lincoln and Gladstone and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the venerable Richard W. Thompson, of Indiana, late a secretary of the navy. Edson Fuller was progressive and enterpris- ing. On attaining his majority he came west and settled in northern Ohio, where, in 1830, he married Celira Canfield. The latter was descended from a Iluguenot family, which settled on the river Cam, in England, in the fourteenth century, on a tract of land granted by the Crown. The first descendant of this Norman family who emigrated to America was Mat- thew Canfield, who settled in Connecticut, and whose name was among the petitioners to the King of England for a royal charter for that colony. HIe was one of the first judges under the charter. His son, Samuel I, was a member of the Connecticut general assembly in 1669; his grandson, Samuel II, was born at Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1672, and married Abigail Austin, of Stamford, in 1709; their son Samuel III, was born at Marl- borough, Massachusetts, July 10, 1710, and his estate is still in the pos- session of his descendants. Thomas Canfield, son of Samuel III, married Miss Burr, and their son, Oliver Canfield, married Sally Sherman in 1782. From this union Celira, the mother of William D. Fuller, was born at Tyring, Massachusetts, July, 1810. She united intellectual faculties of remarkable strength with the peculiar gentleness and refinement which render the womanly character lovable. She was a teacher, a physician, a writer and a very earnest Christian. Her ability, her intuitions, her nat- ural gifts and acquirements, her affectionate disposition and innate love of goodness qualified her admirably for the training of her four sons and two daughters, whose lives in some degree reflect her noble qualities. The eldest daughter, Mrs. Elma L. Hutchison, who lately died, in California, was a practising physician; the youngest daughter died at Grand Rapids, at the age of sixteen. The sons were and are Corydon E., who, at time of his death, was president of the Iowa Loan & Trust Company; Judge Ceylon C., of the Twenty-seventh Judicial Circuit, Big Rapids; William D., Grand Rapids, Reporter of the Supreme Court; and Orrin T., interest clerk in the Iowa Loan & Trust Company. William D. Fuller was a lad of five years when the family located in Grand Rapids, where he attended the common schools until he was sixteen years of age. He was subject to
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the vicissitudes of fortune which bankrupted his father at Mishawaka, Indiana, in the crash of 1857, and returned to Michigan to bear his part of the increased burdens incident to the reverses. He was brave enough to work at any employment which promised remuneration, both at Grand Rapids and Big Rapids, to which he removed at the age of eighteen, when the place was yet in the formative stage of a frontier village. He was in the roughest of the lumbering industry and among the pioneers in road- building. Whatever was necessary to improve the country and build a town he engaged in with the enthusiasm of youth and the energy born of necessity. All of this had its use in fostering a robust and stalwart frame and the cultivation of a vigorous mind for the important duties and responsibilities of later years. Mr. Fuller took up the reading and study of law in the office of Col. J. H. Standish, at Newaygo, and after an examination by the Hon. F. J. Littlejohn, judge of the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, was admitted to the Bar on the first day of September, 1864. While a student at law he married Georgiette H. Standish, the daughter of his preceptor, January 1, 1863. After practising law in Newaygo four years he was elected prosecuting attorney for that county and re-elected in 1870, serving two consecutive terms. He then removed to Grand Rapids and was associated in partnership with Col. Standish, his former preceptor, from 1873 to 1880, when he returned to Newaygo. At this time he embarked in the publication of a newspaper, which he conducted without relinquishing his law practice. In 1882 he was again elected prose- cuting attorney of Newaygo county and at the commencement of his official term was appointed State swamp-land road commissioner. In 1887 he was appointed to the office of Reporter of the Supreme Court and has held the office continuously since that time. His name has become familiar to the lawyers of the State through the forty-seven volumes of official reports issued by him. He has introduced a valuable improvement which is of material service to lawyers who cite the reports. This is a system of annotation of Michigan cases which he has employed in the later volumes. In 1889 he settled in Grand Rapids, but has an office at Newaygo in part- nership with Mr. Fred W. Riblet. Mr. Fuller has the valuable faculty of making friends and retaining them, as well as clients. A striking instance illustrating this faculty is found in the relations which existed between himself and Mr. Sextus N. Wilcox, of Chicago, Illinois, through an acquaintance beginning in 1863 and extending over a period of twenty years. Mr. Fuller, who was then pioneering at Big Rapids, sold to Mr. Wilcox 100,000 feet of saw logs which he had helped to cut and had him- self hauled to the bank of the Muskegon river. By this transaction he won the friendship and confidence of his patron and afterwards acquired sole charge of his extensive legal business relating to his own lumber interests and those of the S. N. Wilcox Lumber Company. He continued to be attorney for his friend and client during his life and was the attorney of his estate and of the company until the winding up of their affairs. Mr.
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Fuller's strong sense of right impelled him to offer his services free of charge as one of the counsel for the defense of Thomas B. Barry, charged with conspiracy in connection with the great Saginaw strike of 1883, when five thousand lumbermen and sawmill men went out. The case was tried before Judge Gage, of Saginaw, and lasted three weeks. It attracted universal attention throughout the State and was of national interest at the time. The defendant was acquitted. Mr. Fuller made the opening address. He is an agreeable companion and a genial gentleman, who has a large acquaintance with the Bar of the state and the esteem of all. He is care- ful and assiduous in the exacting work of reporter, displaying the same energy, industry and promptness that have always characterized his private practice. He is, furthermore, an entertaining public speaker. His addresses are marked by an easy, graceful delivery, which is largely the result of a thorough understanding of his subject .- FULLER, Earnest S., son of William D., is a lawyer of Grand Rapids. He was born at Newaygo, Michigan, September 20, 1865, and educated in the schools of his native town. He learned the newspaper and printing business and was associated with his father in the conduct of the Newaygo Tribune. Since 1887 he has been connected with the office of Court Reporter and assisted in the com- pilation of the reports of cases decided by the Supreme Court. During this time he was also engaged in the study of law and was admitted to the Bar April 18, 1895, after an examination before the Supreme Court in session at Lansing. He was married to Flora B. Hatch, of Lyons, Michi- gan, January 14, 1891.
LAURENS W. WALCOTT, Grand Rapids. Laurens W. Walcott was born February 8, 1843. He is descended from a historic family, distin- guished in Connecticut long before the Colonies revolted against the tyranny of George III. One of his ancestors, Roger Wolcott, was governor of the colony of Connecticut, and Roger's son, Oliver, was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Wolcott's nativity is New York; his early education was received in the schools and academies of that State, while he prepared for college in Batavia, Illinois. In 1861, when President Lincoln called for volunteers to protect the nation's honor and restore the integrity of the Union, he was at Batavia. He responded to the call, enlisting as a private in Company D, Fifty-second Regiment Illinois Volunteers, and served in the Army of the Tennessee until July, 1865. He participated in some of the hardest fought battles of the war, and won the shoulder straps of a first lieutenant before he was mustered out. He attended the Law School of the University of Michigan in 1868 and 1869, was admitted to the Bar in 1869, and immediately entered the office of Byron D. Ball, of Grand Rapids. In 1872 he was elected Circuit Court Commissioner of Kent county and re-elected in 1874. He has been
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engaged continuously in practice of a general character. The firm of Taggart, Walcott & Ganson, of which he is a member, long ago established a reputation for ability, integrity and carefulness in the management of cases scarcely excelled in western Michigan. Mr. Wolcott is a hard stu- dent, and very industrious in the preparation of his cases for trial. He has command of a good vocabulary, is a fluent speaker, and presents a legal argu- ment in terse language with remarkable clearness. He is also a successful advocate, whose aim is rather to instruct and lead the jury than to entertain the visitors at court trials. He has been secretary of the Bar Association at Grand Rapids and president of the Board of Education. He is a gen- tleman of marked personality and classic features, showing the cultivation that comes of a long line of intelligent progenitors. The lineaments of his face exhibit the hereditary traits of ancestors of character and culture, who were honored and trusted by the men of their times. The healthful, life-giving currents that flowed out of the loins of the sturdy, high-minded, pure-hearted, colonial dwellers of New England, and have been trans- mitted through half a dozen generations, have enriched our western civil- ization in learning, in patriotism and all the elements or attributes that make up nobility of character. The man who has such an inheritance is fortunate indeed. If he adds to the lustre to his ancestral name his achieve- ments, will be noteworthy. Mr. Wolcott is a gentleman whose companion- ship one may worthily seek. His natural affability and courteousness are gently restrained by a manner that is somewhat reserved ; but it is a reserve which disappears upon close acquaintance, when one is entitled to the con- fidence of his friendship. He was married in March, 1873, to Miss Lucy Gallup. of Grand Rapids. His church relationship is with the Congre- gational Church.
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CEYLON C. FULLER, Big Rapids. Honorable Ceylon Canfield Fuller, ex-Judge of the twenty-seventh judicial circuit, was born at Chardon, Geauga county, Ohio, June 25, 1832. He is descended from fine old Puritan and Huguenot stock. His father, Edson Fuller, was born at Caze- novia, New York, in 1809, and died in Des Moines, Iowa, April 4, 1879. His ancestors were among the earliest emigrants to this country. His mother was of Huguenot extraction. The name had its origin in the events which succeeded the commingling of English and French history in the fourteenth century. A Huguenot family of Normandy, named Dephilo, for meritorious services, received a grant of land contiguous to the river Cam, in England. The names of the family and the river were joined together and contracted into the name Camphield, an orthography which remained unchanged until the death of Thomas Camphield, in the sixteenth century, when it became Camfield. That orthography obtained until 1720, when it was again changed to Canfield. Matthew Camfield came from England to
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New Haven, Connecticut, in 1639. He was one of the petitioners for a royal charter for the colony of Connecticut, and the charter received from King Charles by Governor Winthrop bore the name of Matthew Camfield among others that afterwards became famous in history. Under the provisions of the Connecticut charter he was appointed a judge in connec- tion with Gold and Sherman, and empowered to hold court at Fairfield, beginning April 1, 1669. Later he removed to Newark, New Jersey, where he died. Matthew's third son, Samuel, was born at New Marl- borough, Massachusetts, June 4, 1710. Thomas, the son of Samuel, was also born in Marlborough, and Oliver, the son of Thomas, married Sally Sherman in 1782. Oliver Canfield and Sally Sherman were the parents of Celira, the mother of Judge Fuller. She was a woman of rare culture and scholarship. Having studied medicine, she practised that profession both in Indiana and Michigan. In 1850, 51 and 52, she had charge of the primary schools in Grand Rapids. She also gave much time to church work and organized the first Sunday school in Big Rapids. She was a writer of much fluency and force. Not infrequently she gave expression to her thoughts in poetry. She lived until July 12, 1883. The name of Edson Fuller is associated with the earliest history of Big Rapids and Mecosta county. Ile brought his family into the village when it contained . only three houses and one saw-mill. He had removed in early manhood from New York to Ohio. He was married in the latter State and remained there until 1845, going thence to Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was only a small village. The journey was made in characteristic western style, with an ox team, through scattered settlements and a portion of the way through a comparative wilderness. After remaining ten years in Grand Rapids and accumulating a considerable amount of property he removed to Mishawaka, Indiana. The memorable financial crisis and panic of 1857 swept away his fortune and he returned to Michigan, going farther out on the frontier to Big Rapids. There he began anew the struggle of life in a field which seemed to promise reasonable returns for well directed efforts. He opened there the first store in the county and carted his miscellaneous stock for that purpose from Grand Rapids, through roads that were almost impassable. After continuing some years as a merchant with considerable success, Mr. Fuller purchased a farm in Mecosta county on which he lived until 1877, when he returned to Big Rapids. This was his home during the remainder of life, although his death occurred while visiting his eldest son at Des Moines, Iowa. Ceylon Canfield Fuller, having spent the early years of his boyhood on the farm and in the public schools of his native county in Ohio, came to Michigan with the family, at the age of thirteen. He attended the Union school at Grand Rapids until eighteen years old and then went to Hiram College, Ohio. He was a fellow student and room-mate of James A. Garfield, at Hiram. A friendship was there formed between the two young men. which continued unbroken until the assassin's bullet closed the life of Garfield on the threshold of its most
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illustrious epoch. Judge Fuller wrote a letter of congratulation to him upon his election to the presidency and received an answer which contained the most friendly sentiments and a hearty allusion to their carly association. Upon leaving college Judge Fuller returned to Grand Rapids where he engaged for a short time in mercantile pursuits, under the style of C. C. Fuller & Co. Having disposed of his interest in this partnership he removed to McGregor, Iowa, where he organized a company to engage in the tanning of leather, which was carried on for a time with the Daniels patent process. While in McGregor, he purchased a half interest in the North Iowa Times, of which he was one of the editors for some time. In 1858 he returned to Grand Rapids and resumed mercantile business. The year following, however, having determined to become a lawyer, he sold his interest in the store and began the study of law in the office of Ashley & Miller, Grand Rapids. The maturity of his mind and its training in other active pursuits enabled him to grasp the principles of law readily and he was admitted to the Bar in June, 1860, a month after he had established his residence at Big Rapids. He was among the very early settlers, as the village contained only five residences at the time he first became one. He is the connecting link between the primitive frontier village and the modern, prosperous city. Judge Fuller's public life may be said to have begun in the fall of 1860, when he was elected Circuit Court Commissioner. He held the office until 1868, and in connection with it during the larger por- tion of this period served as postmaster of the town. In the fall of 1862 he was elected prosecuting attorney for the county, serving as such for two years. In 1864 he was elected judge of Probate and served for four years. In 1868 he was elected to the House of Representatives in the State Legislature and while a member of that body served on the commit- tees of railroads, Engrossing and Enrolled bills. He was the author of several important bills of a local character and also a bill to provide for registration of electors in new townships. In the early history of the county, before the price of land had become high, Judge Fuller bought 240 acres in the town of Big Rapids, forty acres of which he platted as Fuller's Addition. He is still possessed of a portion of this land on which he has erected a residence-a home in contrast with the conditions which he found on locating there. Liberal-minded and public-spirited, he has been among the foremost in identifying himself with whatever tends to build up and advance the material prosperity of a community. In 1873 he built the Opera House Block, in connection with L. H. Green. The panic of that year involved him in financial ruin. His individual loss was $40,000. In 1882 he was elected Judge of the Twenty-seventh Judicial Circuit and served on the Bench for six years. He was the first judge elected to pre- side in that circuit after its formation. Politically he is an earnest Repub- lican. His personal popularity is evidenced by the important elective offices which he has held. His official record has no blot or stain. His honorable public service is in keeping with the purity of his private life.
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