USA > Nebraska > Douglas County > Omaha > History of the city of Omaha, Nebraska > Part 91
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In the summer of 1870, Governor Saun- ders was first mentioned in connection with the office of United States Senator; but he was not successful in securing the position; however, in the winter of 1876-77, he was more fortunate. Ilis term was the full one of six years. It was the time when specie payments were resumed and in this and other important measures he took an active part in carrying them forward to a successful issne. One of the principal of his official successes as senator was his securing over 600,000 acres of land for Nebraska, by the correction of the northern boundary line of the State.
The city of Omaha is much indebted to Governor Saunders for its present pros- perity. He has, ever since he first became a resident of the place, taken a great in- terest in every enterprise of importance which, in his judgment, would, in the end,
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redound to its welfare. He was chairman of the bridge committee of citizens who secured to Omaha the location of the Union Pacific bridge across the Missouri; he was vice-president of the Omaha & Southwestern Railway and one of the original stockholders in the Omaha Smelting Works, and president of the board of regents of the High School, -having been largely instrumental in securing the erection of the High School building of the city. The city gas works, the street railway and numerous other im- provements bear witness to his zeal and generous assistance.
Four years ago, he was appointed upon the Utah Commission, which has charge of the registration and elections in Utah Terri- tory. The law providing for this commis- sion, which is composed of members of both the Republican and Democratic parties, and was therefore not considered as partisan, was enacted in March of 1883, and was de- signed to so regulate elections in that ter- ritory as to prevent all who were practicing polygamy from voting or holding elective office therein. The enforcement of this and subsequent laws on the same subject have had the effect to bring about a thorough change in the advices and teachings of the head of the Mormon Church, and it is now believed that the end is near when this relic of the darker ages shall be banished from our land. The governor has recently re- signed this office, and is now quietly enjoy- ing the pleasures of private life.
The ex-governor "is an admirable result of a youth of hard work, a life of close and conscientious application to whatever may have demanded his attention, and an intelli- gent and practical comprehension of the duties which have presented themselves for his performance. He is respected and pop- ular, and will pass into the history of his State as one of the most conspicuous founders of its greatness."
Among the honors which have been justly bestowed on the subject of this sketch, and one in which he takes great pride, is the fact of his being a third class member of the "Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States," of which the late ex-president R. B. Hayes was commander-in-chief. Of this class there are but few members-now num- bering less than one hundred in the United States,-and these were selected because of their conspicuous loyalty to the United
States government during the Rebellion. Only three per cent of the members of the commandery could be admitted as members of this class, and they only upon an unani- mous favorable vote taken by secret ballot. No new members can now be admitted of this class, and as the members have no successors, this class will pass away at the death of its present members.
It is proper to say that Mr. Sannders has been in business as controller of the Omaha Real Estate and Trust Company for several years, and is now its president. Ile is also vice president of the Mutual Investment Company, and a director in the Merchants National Bank and also in the Nebraska Savings and Exchange Bank.
JAMES STEPHENSON .- The energy, activity and enterprise a man displays, and the amount of work he accomplishes, are, in this Western country, usually set down to his credit; and one of the reasons why the subject of this sketch enjoys a good degree of popularity is because he has strikingly developed these characteristics.
James Stephenson was born October 31, 1836, on Spring Street, in New York City, when that now great metropolis was just be- ginning to show to the civilized world that it would one day rank among the foremost of its cities. In 1853, he located at Daven- port, Iowa, but only remained there a short time, removing to Newton, Jasper County, that State, where he entered the employ of the Western Stage Company. Like most of his associates of that period, the desire to be- come suddenly rich took possession of him, and, in 1860, he turned his steps to the West, driving an ox team from Newton to Denver, Colorado, reaching there after a per- ilous journey of sixty-three days. On the way he heard Ilorace Greely's memorable speech at Fort Laramie. Subsequently he returned to Newton, and once more cast his fortunes with the Western Stage Company, remaining with them until he secured the contract for transporting the mails and bag- gage across the Missouri River from Coun- cil Bluffs to Omaha, and held this until the Union Pacific bridge was completed. In 1870 he opened a livery stable in Omaha, and has continued in that business ever since, having now the finest equipped estab- lishment of that kind in the West.
Before the railroads were scattered so
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thoroughly over Nebraska, Wyoming, Kan- sas and lowa, Mr. Stephenson carried most of the mails, and has always been extensively engaged in staging, being one of the first to send a coach from Sidney, Nebraska, to Dead- wood, Dakota, during the ever memorable year of 1877, when it was as much as a man's life was worth to venture into the Indians' country. Many, indeed, are the thrilling adventures he can relate of hair- breadth escapes from frenzied savages. and he was often an eye-witness to many small bloody encounters with them. At the time of the late trouble with the Indians at Pine Ridge agency, he had a large govern- ment contract in which two hundred teams were kept in constant employment. In 1885 lie established the first cab line in Omaha, and, notwithstanding the city now enjoys excellent street railway facilities, he has always found it a paying business. In addition to this, he is an extensive railroad contractor, having done much important work for the " B. & M." and the Rock Island, and for the Union Stock Yards Company, at South Omaha.
In 1882 he removed 175,000 yards of earth on which is now constructed the Chi- cago, Burlington & Quincy Railway freight depot. During this contract the govern- ment troops and the State militia were called out to suppress the riots caused by one of the greatest strikes Omaha has ever seen.
Mr. Stepenson has served the City of Omaha four years as a member of the coun- cil, and he discharged his duties in that position with credit to himself and to the satisfaction of the public. He is now a prominent member of the Liverymen's As- sociation, an active member and one of the directors of the Omaha Board of Trade, and has the street cleaning contract of the city until 1895. He is highly esteemed for his enterprise and sterling integrity.
JOHN MELLEN THURSTON. - The history of the country does not furnish a better illustration of a self-made man, than is shown by the record of Mr. John M. Thurston.
At the age of forty-three years he is gen- eral solicitor and legal adviser of the great- est railway system of the continent; has achieved a national fame as an orator second to none,'and is already looked upon as one of the coming leaders of the Republican party.
What he has won has been the result of hard work, manly independence and great ability. Commencing life as a poor boy, compelled to labor with his hands for daily bread, he has risen above the circumstances of birthi, and is an illustrious example of the possibilities of our civilization and free in- stitutions.
Hle was born in Montpelier, Vermont, on the twenty-first day of August, 1847. Ilis family, on his father's side, was descended from John Thurston, who came from Suffolk in England, and settled at Dedham, Massa- chusetts, in 1636. There were three Thur- stons who arrived in New England at about the same time, and are supposed to have been brothers. From them have descended almost all of that name now living in the United States.
Mr. Thurston's mother's name was Ruth Mellen. Her family originally came from Ireland. They were among the first settlers of what was then known as the " Hampshire Grant," which is now the State of Vermont. His grandfather, John Mellen, (after whom our subject was named,) and his brother Thomas were in the battle of Bennington under General Stark. Ilis grandfather Thur- ston was a soldier in the war of 1812, and his great-grandfather a revolutionary patriot, having also served as a soldier in that struggle.
Mr. Thurston's father was Daniel Sylvester Thurston. He was one of a large family born in Orange county, Vermont. One of his brothers, Elisha Thurston, worked his way through college, took up educational pursuits, was professor in various institu- tions of learning, and at one time was State superintendent of public instruction in Maine. About the time of the commence- ment of the Kansas troubles, he moved to that State, engaged in the practice of law, was very active on the side of the free-soiler, and about 1860, at the time of his death, was mayor of Manhattan, Kansas.
The father of Mr. Thurston was, for the greater portion of his life, a farmer. For a few years prior to emigrating from Vermont, he was engaged in conducting a tannery; was also for some time a member of a mer- cantile firm. In 1854, he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he remained for four years, and then went to Beaver Dam, in that State. He was a man of very great natural ability; took an active part in all public affairs, and
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is said by those who remember him, to have been a forcible and direct speaker, although he rarely took part in public discussions. At the inauguration of the civil war, he en- listed in the First Wisconsin Cavalry, not- withstanding the fact that he was fifty-fonr years of age. His enlistment as a private was made prior to the organization of the regiment, but with the promise that lie should receive the appointment of reg- imental wagon-master. Before the regiment left the State, however, he received a com- mission as second lieutenant of the Seven- teenth Wisconsin Infantry, generally known as the " Irish Brigade," and assisted in recruiting a company for that regiment. Before the regiment left for the seat of war, it went into winter quarters late in the fall of 1861, at Madison, the capital, where it was overtaken by violent storms and severe weather before it could be provided with the proper shelter. In consequence of this exposure, the old gentleman was attacked with congestion of the lungs, and just before the regiment departed for the front, he was carried to his home at Beaver Dam, on the supposition that his illness would necessarily be fatal. One of his last official acts before he left, was to resign his commission, so that an active man could be appointed in his place to take the field.
Recovering from his severe illness, to the surprise of every one acquainted with him, the following summer, 1862, he again en- listed as a private in the First Wisconsin Cavalry, and with that organization partici- pated in the campaign against the "gueril- las" of Missouri. He remained on duty with his company until the spring of 1863, when he was sent home in a dying condition, living but a few days after arriving there. His family at that time consisted of his wife, three married daughters, one unmarried, and the son, John Mellen, who was now com- pelled to support his mother and the rest of the family, as they were left almost wholly with- out means. The brave young fellow took hold of anything he could find to make honest wages. Every summer, from the time he was fourteen years old, he worked in the har- vest fields of Wisconsin, and in the autumn hired out as an attendant to a threshing machine, receiving for his employment about thirty dollars a month.
In 1865, when but seventeen, he went to the City of Chicago to accept a situation as
driver of a horse and wagon for a wholesale fruit and fancy grocery store, of which Matthew, Graff & Co., located on South Water Street, were proprietors. For this work young Thurston received ten dollars a week, out of which he was obliged to pay his board. Continuing at it for a year, he dis- covered that except a new suit of clothes which he did not have at the commencement of the year, he was no better off than when he began.
He returned to his mother's home at Beaver Dam, and for three winters engaged in fishing through the ice and trapping, em- ploying a number of boys to work for him on shares, he furnishing the necessary outfit. Ile also drove a team over the lake twice a week, purchasing fish, which he shipped to Chicago; and during the time he was engaged in this business made it quite profitable, one winter clearing nearly one thousand dollars. During this period he attended the public schools of Beaver Dam, for a portion of the time keeping up in all the classes, though he was absent, necessarily, the greater part of the year.
In the spring of 1866 he left the public schools and entered Wayland University, an institution in Beaver Dam, which, at that time, had a full preparatory and collegiate course, ranking with the average western denominational college. This was a Baptist institution and was really a very good school. It was kept alive by that sect of Christians in Wisconsin, but it met the fate of a great many of its class. During the time young
Thurston was there it was closed for want of funds to carry it on, and he was compelled to leave with the other students. This dis- aster occurred in the summer of 1868. He had managed to attend school about half of each school year, though he had kept up with his classes, so that when the institution was compelled to close, he had but one more year to study there to complete the full course of the college, but this collapse of the college ended Mr. Thurston's school days.
Hle now determined to study law, and to that end he entered the office of Mr. E. P. Smith, an eminent attorney of Wisconsin, for many years a practitioner at the Milwau- kee bar, who then was a member of the Beaver Dam bar. One of the curious and pleasant changes of fortune has placed Mr. Smith under Mr. Thurston's supervision as assistant general attorney of the Union
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Pacific System for the State of Nebraska. On the 21st day of May, 1869, after an examination in open court, by the Honor- able Alva Stuart, circuit judge in Portage, Columbia County, Wisconsin, Mr. Thurston was admitted to the bar. As soon, however, as he had passed a severe and successful ex- amination, he found it necessary for the remainder of that summer to return to man- ual labor; first taking a contract to put up several miles of board fence on a large farm near the town. When the grain harvest commenced, he entered the fields as a binder. continuing at this hard labor to the end of the season. Then he prepared to move West, though he had no acquaintances in all the great domain included in that title. Ile procured a map and studied it carefully ; for a long time he was undecided. ITis choice wavered between Kansas City and Omaha; but he finally decided in favor of the latter, largely for the reason that it was situated in the state from which its business must come; while Kansas City was on the Western border of Missouri, where its commercial and other relations would necessarily be more identi- fied with Kansas affairs.
Mr. Thurston arrived in Omaha on the morning of October 5th, 1869. in company with Mr. Herman E. Luthe, now a successful attorney at the Denver bar, it being their intention to practice law together.
It is a popular belief of young attorneys that they should associate themselves to- gether in business when they go to a new place to commence the practice of their pro- fession. On the day of their arrival in Omaha, Mr. Thurston was possessed of about forty dollars, and he walked into the office of Mr. William HI. Morris, now judge of the fifth Nebraska district, and asked him if he knew of a place where two young lawyers could get cheap office room. Mr. Morris re- plied he did not, but that they could put up a desk in his office if they wished and were willing to pay ten dollars a month for the privilege. Mr. Thurston immediately paid him that amount out of his forty dollars, and the young men moved in, bringing with them an old desk which had been shipped so as to be in Omaha by the time of their ar- rival. Then, theoretically, they commenced the practice of law. Their office was in a large room in the old Visscher block, where the Millard hotel now stands. The great room was occupied by Judge Morris as a
justice office, by William Kidd, as an employ- ment office, and by the law firm of Thurston & Luthe.
The young attorneys very soon discovered that where there is not business enough for one to live on, two must necessarily starve if they attempt to divide it between them, so Mr. Luthe, who had married just before leaving Wisconsin, and had brought his wife with him, abandoned the practice tempor- arily and obtained work in the Union Pacific shops as a machinist. Thus was the law firm of Thurston & Luthe dissolved. The junior member after working all winter, sent his wife back to Wisconsin, went to Denver, where he eventually succeeded in taking high rank in his profession.
Mr. Thurston, true to his characteristics of persistence, stuck to his office both tlieo- retically and in reality. He slept on its floor at night, using for his bedding some quilts and a buffalo robe, which he had brought from his home in Wisconsin. This impro- vised hed was rolled up in the morning and hidden in one corner of the room. During all the period of his novitiate in Omaha, as Judge Morris very vividly recollects, Mr. Thurston was reduced to the necessity, for many considerably extended intervals of time, of living on the nutritious, but rather monotonous diet of crackers, which he was very luckily able to buy by the box from the grocery store of A. Burley, then in the Caldwell block, at wholesale prices.
Thus Mr. Thurston struggled on, varying success attending his efforts, as has been the fate of hundreds of other young men in the incipient days of their practice. In the fall of 1871, Judge Morris resigned his posi- tion as justice of the peace, and Mr. Thurs- ton was appointed by the county commision- ers to fill the vacancy. Judge Morris and himself now removed to the Caldwell Block, where they occupied two rooms, instead of one, as formerly. After Mr. Thurston's ap- pointment as justice of the peace, the posi- tions of the tenants were completely re- versed; Mr. Morris now occupied the little desk of the lawyer, and Mr. Thurston the judicial chair.
Mr. Thurston continued to practice his profession, and " run" the office of justice of the peace, until the spring of 1873, when he resigned the latter position to form a law partnership with Hon. Charles H. Brown. The previous spring Mr. Thurston had been
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elected a member of the city council, from the third ward of Omaha, which office he filled for two consecutive years, acting as president of that body and also as chairman of the judiciary committee.
In the spring of 1874, upon the expiration of his term as alderman, he was appointed city attorney by the newly elected mayor, IIon. C. S. Chase, which position he filled for three years, resigning finally to accept the assistant attorneyship of the Union Pacific Railway, under the Hon. A. J. Pop- pleton, who was general solicitor of the lines of that corporation.
On Christmas day, 1872, Mr. Thurston was married to Miss Martha Poland, daugli- ter of Col. Luther Poland, of Omaha, a most estimable lady, whose family were, like her husband's, originally from Vermont. Her uncle, her father's brother, was the lion- orable and venerable Luke P. Poland, for many years chief justice of the Green Moun- tain State, a representative in congress for several terms and United States Senator.
Of five children born of this marriage, three were sons and two daughters. Two of the sons died of diphtheria, leaving one son and two daughters, who now, with his estimable wife, comprise Mr. Thurston's accomplished family.
For fifteen years, Mr. Thurston has been prominently identified with a majority of the leading cases in the courts of Nebraska. Early in the spring of 1877, he was em- ployed by the governor of the State, under authority of an act of the legislature, to prosecute the case of the State of Nebraska vs. Ira P. Olive. This was a veritable cause celebre, and known to the history of western jurisprudence as the "Great Man-Burning Case." Olive and others, who were residents of Custer County, were charged with the hor- rible crime of not only hanging but of also burning two victims of their ferocity, named Mitchell and Ketchum, in the wilder- ness of that unsettled country, where their charred bodies were afterwards discovered.
The trial created great excitement at the time, and was participated in by the leading lawyers of the State. The cattlemen of the whole west took up the matter for the prin- cipal defendant, Olive, and for a long period there was intense excitement and grave ap- prehensions that there would be bloody do- ings at llastings, where had assembled hun- dreds and even thousands of cow-boys, many
of whom were supposed to have come from Texas for the purpose of rescuing Olive and his associates in the crime. Mr. Thurston was given the post of honor in the trial and made the closing argument for the State. Olive was convicted of murder in the sec- ond degree and sentenced to the peniten- tiary for life. He was afterwards released on a decision of the Supreme Court of Ne- braska, to the effect that the laws had been so bungled, that prosecution for crime eom- mitted in Custer County could not be heard in any other county, and there was no provis- ion of law for prosecution in Custer County.
Among other notable trials in which Mr. Thurston has participated was a case prose- cuted in York County where two persons were arraigned for killing one William II. Armstrong. This was a case attended by the most romantic circumstances. It grew out of a runaway match between one of the de- fendants and the daughter of William II. Armstrong, the deceased. The trouble oc- curred in the presence of the young woman, who was at the same time the daughter of the man killed, and the wife of one of the men who participated in the homicide. Mr. Thurston was the leading counsel for the defense, and after a most exciting trial the defendants were acquitted. The somewhat noted Henry Clay Dean, was brought into the State by the friends of the deceased, and conducted the prosecution.
Mr. Thurston has also taken a leading part in a number of more or less celebrated murder trials in Nebraska; he, together with the Hon. James W. Savage, defended John W. Lauer, whose trial, in Omaha, for kill- ing his wife, is still of recent memory. This case was one of the most celebrated criminal cases ever tried in Nebraska. Public opin- ion was largely against the defendant. The prosecution was very ably conducted by the district attorney, Mr. L. S. Estelle, with whom was associated that prominent and successful prosecutor, John C. Cowin. The first trial resulted in a verdict of manslaugh- ter, which was no more satisfactory to the public than to the defendant.
The supreme court had just decided in the Bohannon case, that a defendant, at whose instance a verdict was set aside, could be again put on trial for murder in the first degree, even though on the first trial the verdict had been given of a crime of a lower degree.
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The defendant being fully advised of the possible result to him, insisted upon a motion for a new trial. Upon presentation thereof the motion was sustained upon the ground, as generally understood, that the defendant was certainly guilty of murder in the first degree, if guilty of anything, and that the evidence did not justify in any legal sense a verdict of manslaughter.
This seemed to be the opinion of those who had followed the course of the first trial, during the progress of which, the press had very fully printed the evidence of wit- nesses and arguments of counsel. Mr. Thurston was sharply criticised by the pro- fession in the State for permitting his client to submit himself to the chances of a second trial under the lately announced rule in the "Bohannon case," and this criticism was much stronger when it was known that the second trial was to occur in Douglas County. The public interest in the case was intense, not only in Omaha, but in all that portion of the State, in which the daily papers made neighborhood items of the news of the city.
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