USA > Nebraska > Douglas County > Omaha > History of the city of Omaha, Nebraska > Part 77
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The family then returned to the Sharon homestead, where George passed his youth in farming and in the old school house on the hill; at sixteen swinging the cradle through six acres of good grain in a day. He was a good boy, beloved of parents, and favored by those who knew him.
His upper schooling was gathered at Kala- mazoo College, the State Normal School at Ypsilanti, the law office of Judge F.C. Beaman of Adrian; and in April, 1863, he graduated from the law department of Michigan Uni- versity, at once opening office at Ann Arbor.
But the stars move westward, and in March, 1867, Mr. Ambrose became a resident
of Omaha; the friend of all Nebraska, in law, politics and social welfare.
He soon secured a good practice, increasing from year to year in variety and importance of causes, until he stands, in the judgment of the profession and the public, in the front rank of able and successful lawyers. His experience during those years had covered a wide field of legal research, bringing him frequently into causes of more than ordinary magnitude, many of them involving novel and unsettled questions. Some of these were leading cases in Nebraska, in which constitutional construction or fundamental propositions of law were to be, for the first time, settled.
Among them may be noted the Pleuler case, reported in 11 Nebraska, 547, involv- ing the constitutionality of the Slocum or high license law, then recently enacted. Those interested in the liquor traffic opposed it as too stringent, and on the ground, among others, of conflict with the constitution. A test case soon arose in which Mr. Ambrose made the brief and the principal argument in favor of the validity of the act. It was sustained, when it reached the Supreme Court, largely upon his line of argument,- the court holding it in all respects valid and constitutional; and it has proved an effective and popular statute for regulating the liquor traffic.
In Hanscom vs. The City of Omaha, 11 Nebraska, 37, involving the principle npon which special taxes may be assessed, he was one of the counsel for the city, and success- ful in the district court; but, on account of the peculiar facts in the case, the judgment was reversed on appeal.
Harmon vs. The City of Omaha, 17 Ne- braska 548, was the first case presenting the question whether, under the constitution of 1875, damages, caused by grading in front of lots, could be recovered from the city. Mr. Ambrose successfully maintained the proposition that such damages were in- cluded in the provision that property shall not be "damaged for public use without just compensation therefor." Establishing a
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principle of great and lasting importance in this state.
His special strength as a lawyer is shown in a clear perception of the pivotal question upon which his cause will turn; preparing it with that in view; and in the lucid and logical presentation of his points, carrying conviction to the minds of the jury and the court. This is aided by the research which brings to the aid of the court adjudicated causes bearing closely upon the question in review; and the discrimination which elimi- nates all foreign elements from the discus- sion; and in this he has had marked success. It is not his habit to seek notoriety by sensa- tional or clamorous demonstrations before a jury, but in that field of labor he addresses their reason and understanding, appealing to their sense of justice, fair play and right between litigants, whether persons or cor- porations. As a specimen of his style of legal argument, I give an extract of his brief in the case of Felix (half-breed Indian) vs. Patrick, et al., in the United States Su- preme Court, upon the right of Indians to maintain suits in the courts of the country :
"Is an Indian a person? If he is, then the courts are open to him and he is bound, like any other person, to all provisions of law which apply to litigants. If he is not a person then the rule of the Dred Scott case is reversed, and the rule of decision here must be that a white man has no rights which Indians are bound to respect. Is such a rule to obtain? Hardly. At the time of the discovery of this continent, Columbus, and those with him, thought that the land upon which their eyes rested was located beyond the Ganges, and vaguely known to him as the Indies. He found here a race of people inhabiting the country and gave to them the name of Indian, because of their supposed location in the Indies. By all literary, as well as law writers, this race has, from time immemorial, been considered free persons, living together in a state of nature. They have been so recognized by every act of congress relating to their in- terest, and by every court which has been called to pass upon their property rights. They have never been considered in a state of vassalage, or chattelized; they have been treated with as persons capable of receiving the title to property, to hold property, to use property, varying in this as to the status of the negro race. The negro race
were chattels in the eyes of the law, inca- pable of holding property, owing to their masters entire subservience. Not so with the Indian. The various tribes of Indians in this country have been considered by the highest courts of the land as nations, governing themselves by their own law, usages and customs without interference in that regard by other persons inhabiting this continent. Every case which in this argu- ment will be referred to, these people have been considered and treated as so many in- dependent nations, composed of individual persons. It will not do to say that they were not such. In every aspect of our civilization, they have been so treated; in every tribute which has been paid to their bravery, their courage and fidelity, they have been treated as persons capable of exer- cising every attribute which belongs to our common humanity."
In the case of the State ex rel, the At- torney General vs. The Nebraska Distilling Company in the Supreme Court, the validity of the anti-trust statute was drawn in ques- tion. Mr. Ambrose made the brief and argument for the Distilling Company, and took occasion then (1890) to lay before the court the same lines of argument, relating to the labor organizations, as obnoxious trusts, if their objects became perverted, as were used by Judges Taft, Ricks and others in the late railroad strike decisions, and as given by Associate Justice Brewer in his great paper upon "The Movement of Co- ercion" in January, 1893. Mr. Ambrose said:
" The greatest trusts that this world has ever seen have been the labor organizations of this country. It is a trust which con- trols, makes and unmakes corporate bodies. It controls the price of labor and the price of material; and every day adds action and life to this hnman anaconda, called labor unions.
" Both labor and capital are necessary for the continnance of this country; but to say that one shall be fostered at the expense of the other is demagogism; and still the poli- ticians of the country, not because of their love for labor, but because of their love of place and power, pander to labor, and howl themselves hoarse as against capital.
" If a law should be passed by the legisla- ture of Nebraska which should attempt to dissolve these labor organizations now exist-
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ing, and prevent the formation of others in the future, and this court should, by its de- cree, sustain such legislation as competent, I apprehend that the cyclones which some- times sweep over the country, devastating everything in their path would be mild and gentle as a summer's breeze in comparison to those which would unseat your honors from the wool-sack which you now so grace- fully occupy. But the time will come when some judge in his majesty will arise and in no uncertain terms rebuke the organizations which are now exempted from the operation of this act of the legislature, and which ex- emption renders the legislation of Nebraska obnoxious to the constitution."
And that he has borne his legal lanes and duties in strong arms, let me say that Judge Lake, then of the Supreme Bench, once re- marked:
" There is no lawyer in the State whose briefs the supreme court finds more satis- factory, than those of Ambrose."
I need not lengthen this sketch with the further history of his great or noted cases, but an inspection of the dockets of the dis- trict, supreme and United States courts of Nebraska, will assure all that he is at the large end of the large cases in the State; and if you poll the clients of many years, you will find the verdict on the side of the clients' abiding faith in the attorney, and warm friendship between the two.
But once has he touched politics, being elected to the State senate in 1876, and serv- ing the State with a firmness above price. Twice wedded, and of several children born to him, one daughter remains, Mrs. Mamie Ambrose Rivinius, of Boston. Ile has one brother, James Clement Ambrose, the plat- form lecturer of Chicago, and one sister, Emma O. Ambrose, now twelve years a Baptist Missionary in Burmah, India.
GEORGE B. AYRES was born in Olm- sted county, Minnesota, June 15th, 1856, and entered the high school at Roches- ter, that state, at the age of fourteen, where he finished in 1873. During the last three years of his high school education he also studied medicine with his uncle, Dr. Gallo- way, and entered the medical department of of the University of Michigan in the fall of 1873, where he remained at close application to his study for one year, but finding that he would be too young to graduate at the
end of his period of study, he decided to go one year to Carleton College at Norfield, Minnesota, after which he returned to the University of Michigan, in 1875, took his second course in medicine, and in the spring of 1876, accompanied Prof. Ford to Long Island College Hospital, where he took the summer course in medicine and a degree of Doctor of Medicine, in the fall of 1876 be- fore he was twenty-one years old.
Ile again returned to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1876, took the degree of Doctor of Medicine from that institution in the spring of 1877, after which he was elected as assistant professor of anatomy there, which position he filled with honor and dignity for three years, and acted as secretary of the faculty of the medical department the last year of his stay.
Dr. Ayres came to Omaha in the fall of 1880, and with Dr. Mercer, started the Omaha Medical College; for three years he filled the chair of anatomy and afterward, for several years, clinical surgery, with much credit to himself and honor to the in- stitution. During the first five years, from 1880 to 1885, he was assistant to Dr. Mercer, and assistant surgeon of the Union Pacific Railroad, and also the last few years was division surgeon of the Missouri Pacific.
In 1888, Dr. Ayres was appointed medical director for the Mutual Life Insurance Com- pany of New York, and had charge of the State of Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and a portion of Montana and Kansas, and filled the position with credit to himself and satisfaction to the company.
As a private practitioner, Dr. Ayres was assidnous, sagacious, and excelled in nearly every department, although surgery was his favorite practice. He had located for life in Omaha, and to be near him, his parents, wlio had no other children, removed to Douglas County and settled near Omaha, where they now live.
lIe was married February 7th, 1885, to Miss Agnes Hoyt, of Omaha, who still re- sides in this city. In all the social and pro- fessional walks of life where Dr. Ayres was known, he was respected and loved. His gentle manners, brilliant intellect and active disposition brought him friends and success everywhere, and his untimely death, August 19, 1890, was considered a great loss to the profession and to the society of Omaha.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF OMAHA.
SAMUEL DEWITT BEALS was born in the village of Greene, Chenango County, New York, on the 10th day of January, 1826. His father's father, Capt. William Beals, master of a merchant vessel, put out from Stonington, Connecticut, just before a severe storm, and was never after heard from. His father, at that time a lad of eight years, was " bound out" as an appren- tice to an uncle, Joseph Smith, to learn the carpenter's trade, and with him, after- ward, went to the Chenango valley, New York.
His mother's father, Samuel Martin, of Coventry, New York, went from Connecti- cut to Chenango on horseback, taking all his earthly goods, and his young wife, Phoebe Goodrich, with him on one horse. This young woman had seen greater hardships of a similar kind. When a mere child, her father fled with her in his arms and with an older sister (all on the same horse) from the atrocities of the Indians and the flames of their burning home, fired by the noble (?) red men of the Mohawk Valley, at the burning of the village of Schenectady, in 1790. His father, Henry Beals and his mother, Ruth Martin, were married at her father's home in Coventry, in 1823. To them were born five children, three sons and two daughters, of whom only two survive, Susan Maria Stoddard, of Coventryville, New York, and the subject of this sketch.
DeWitt attended the village schools until 1840, when he was sent to a much-praised private school in Coventry. In 1842-3, his father had retired from his business as arch- itect and builder, and lived on a farm of six hundred acres, on the crest of the divide between the Chenango River and the Gene- gantslet, one of its tributaries on the west.
Rural life at that time did not offer suf- ficient attractions to the son, and he bar- gained with his father to pay for his time and all his expenses while attending school, which he could do from a bequest from his mother's mother, (of which his father was guardian). In 1842-3 he attended the academy, at Oxford, and in 1844-5. the academy at Norwich, New York-the late Benj. F. Taylor being principal. While there, after a vigorous wrestling-match with his room-mate, he took cold that resulted in pneumonia, and threatened quick consump- tion.
His father would never after allow him to
attend school away from home, and he was obliged to finish his school-work with the Rev. Dr. Azariah G. Orton, of the Presby- terian Church, and Rev. Dr. John V. Van Ingen, of the Episcopal Church, as tutors. His private studies, however, have never been abandoned and his library now num- bers upward of three thousand volumes.
At the age of seventeen, he became a member of the First Congregational Church, of Greene. This church was connected with the Presbytery of Chenango, on what was known as the "plan of union." Ile was chosen several times as lay delegate to the Presbytery, and once to represent the church at the Synod of Susquehannah, at Walton, Delaware County, N. Y. The Presbytery, at a session held in Norwich, N. Y., chose him as its lay commissioner to the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church at St. Louis, Mo., in 1857. At the Synod he took an active part in the discussion of the right of synod to put any other construc- tion on the act of the Presbytery of Che- nango, in the "Norwich Church case," than the specific interpretation of the Presbytery itself. The Synod might pronounce the act of Presbytery unwise or unconstitutional, it could not give it an other interpretation. At the general assembly, although strongly opposed to slavery, he voted with the minor- ity, against sending a committee to the Southern States to spy out slave holders in the church.
In 1848 Mr. Beals' father gave him a farm, which after a few years, on account of ill health he was obliged to give up. In 1858, he accepted an unsolicited offer of the prin- cipalship of the Union school, in his native village.
On the 28th day of June, 1847, he was married to Miss Grace Elizabeth Williams, daughter of Samuel and Sarah Williams, of Greene, N. Y., who has shared his sorrows and joys, his disappointments and successes, throngh the varied experiences of forty-six years. They have had two children, Emma Elizabeth Beals, born at Greene. July 4th, 1848, and Clara Williams Beals, born in the same town, September 28, 1851. Both died in Omaha, while yet young; the former at the age of twenty-two, on December 8, 1870, and the latter on the 15th day of January, 1869, at the age of 17. Their mortal re- mains rest in Prospect Hill Cemetery.
Mr. Beals came to Omaha in 1861, reach-
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ing here on April 5th. On the 22d of the same month, he opened a private school in the old State House on Ninth Street. This school was known for upward of six years as the Omaha lligh School. It opened with seven pupils, but before the end of the year the enrollment exceeded ninety, and two assistants became necessary. Pupils came from the adjoining counties and from the valley of the Platte, a hundred miles away, to attend this institution. It was well sus- tained, but on account of high rents and cost of living it did not prove to be profit- able. lle closed the school in May, 1867, and was immediately appointed clerk by the Hon. Thos, P. Kennard, secretary of state and ex-officio state librarian, who, resid- ing at a distance from the capital, could not attend to the clerical duties of these offices.
In 1868, Governor David Butler appointed Mr. Beals his private secretary, and for the following year the clerical duties, and often more than these, devolved upon him.
Mr. Beals was appointed State Super- intendent of Public Instruction by the governor, Februray 23, 1869. In this office his duties were difficult and arduous. The general tax for schools had been retained in the counties and towns where collected, and its distribution by the commissioners had been little more than in name. He secured their full payment into the State treasury and made the first equitable distribution in tlie following December. He visited nearly every organized county in the State, hold- ing teachers' institutes, making addresses, and counselling with county superintendents and district boards, concerning the county organization of districts and the manage- ment of district affairs. He advised the officers of counties which were only partly settled, to include the whole county in the organized school districts, even to include the whole county in one district, and to build school houses as they should be re- quired in different neighborhoods, taxing the whole county for the erection of every building, and in this way lighten the bur- den of the first settlers in all parts of the county, and compel non-resident land hold- ers to contribute so far to the prosperity of the settlers, on whose labors they depended for profits by the increase in values. In many counties this policy to some extent
was adopted. In Hall County it was fully carried out, and with best results.
In compliance with the law he designated the text books to be used throughout the State, and, notwithstanding the strenuous opposition of disappointed publishers, gained their general adoption. Some of the State officers proposed to make money out of the recommendation. One of them was dis- patched to Chicago, but the same train that carried the State official carried also a pri- vate messenger, sent by the superintendent to inform the publishers, that the list of books would not be changed so long as the superintendent held his office; that their money, or want of it, would have no influ- ence to change the list. He regarded a pub- lic office as a public trust; no man could make him swerve from faithfully perform- ing every public duty, without regard to partisan or private interests. He raised the standard of teachers' qualifications by pre- paring and sending questions for the exam- ination of teachers to the county superinten- dents, and receiving the answers submitted in return. To this thorough supervision and unselfish administration at the begin- ning, Nebraska owes much of her educa- tional prosperity.
At the close of his term in 1871-2, he ex- amined and graded the Omaha schools ac- cording to a course of study which he, assisted by Lyman Hutchinson, had pre- pared for them in 1870. In 1872-3, he held a principalship in one of the schools. In the fall of 1873, both political parties nominated him to the office of county sup- erintendent of public instruction, for Dong- las County. He was, of course, elected, and while in office revised the records of the dis- trict boundaries and their past changes, made new plats of all the districts, and devised a simple and complete method of keeping records of all future changes in boundaries, so that they could be seen at a glance. He prepared a graded course of study to secure uniformity of work and to prevent much of the unreasonable delays caused by change of teachers. His certificates gave full confi- dence to school directors as to the qualifica- tions of the teachers presenting them. He resigned in July, 1874, to take the superin- tendency of the Omaha schools. To this office the board of education elected him six years in succession.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF OMAHA.
In the management of these schools le accomplished what few would have the courage to undertake. He prescribed meth- ods for doing the work in all subjects, in all classes and grades, from the lowest in the primary, to the highest in the grammar de- partment. It was not uncommon for him to take a class out of the teacher's hand, and give a practical illustration of the methods he recommended. To young and inexper- ienced teachers he gave particular attention, leading them to practice the best methods, at the same time explaining the reasons for their use, that they might be in full sympa- thy with the work.
In each of the first four years, he made nine entirely new monthly written examina- tions, preparing all the questions in all the subjects, for all the grades. lle carefully examined the standing of all the pupils ex- cept the first primaries, and made all pro- motions. Such was the system in the work that similar classes in different parts of the city, on any given day, were rarely more than one or two lessons apart. Yet there was no unnatural strain, no nervous anxiety, save in a few instances that were traceable to the teacher and not to the school work. Men, who had for years been engaged in educational work- practical teachers from the extreme East, as well as from the West -after visiting them, pronounced the Omaha schools among the best in the coun- try; some frankly said they had never seen such good work anywhere.
Since the expiration of his last term as superintendent, Mr. Beals has taught in the Omaha high school, where he is now en- gaged.
GEORGE PICKERING BEMIS .- The ancestry of the subject of this sketch were of English origin. The earliest mention of any member of the family in the United States is that of Joseph Bemis, who was born in 1619 and was in Watertown, Massachusetts, as early as 1640; was selectman in 1648, 1672 and 1675, and died August 2, 1684. In the fifth generation from him was Jonas Bemis, born December 21, 1766, and died Inly 7, 1841. His son, Emery Bemis, (the father of the present George Pickering Bemis, of whom we write), was born June 30, 1800, in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and died in Cambridge, same State, November 28, 1882.
George Pickering Bemis was born in Boston, Massachusetts, March 15, 1838, and few Americans during the active period of their lives have seen so much of the world; have come into intimate contact with so many people of all classes and conditions of society, at home and abroad; have been identified more or less closely with so many and varied enterprises, social, commercial and political, as Mr. Bemis. ITis given name was from the Rev. George Pickering, the grandfather on the mother's side, who at the time of his death, was tlie oldest effective Methodist minister in the world, having been a preacher for fifty-seven years. Inheriting from his father a considerable fortune, prin- cipally in slaves, Rev. Piekering refused to receive them or any profit from their sale or labor, and they were freed; he also de- clined to be made a bishop. £ He died December 8, 1846, in his seventy-eightlı year.
When thirteen years of age Mr. Bemis removed with his parents to New York, he having previously attended the grammar schools of his native city, and for one year a school in Maine conducted by Alexander Hamilton Abbott. Although his father was a merchant in affluent circumstances, young Bemis, before he was fourteen, commenced his business career by engaging with a retail grocery on Eighth Avenue, New York, toopen and close the store at $2.50 per week. About a year later he was employed with the ship- ping house of Wm. Whitlock, Jr., trading to Havre, France, and other countries, with packet and clipper ships. Four years later Mr. Bemis engaged with the extensive pro- duce commission house of Finch & IIill, as lead clerk. where he remained two years and then joined his father, who was doing an extensive business in the wholesale leaf tobacco trade in Boston for one-half a cen- tury.
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