USA > New York > Oneida County > Utica > Historical fallacies regarding colonial New York : an address delivered before the Oneida Historical Society, Utica, N.Y., at its second annual meeting, January 14, 1879 > Part 5
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the presiding judge of the court was escorted to and from the hotel, each forenoon and afternoon session, by the Sheriff, with sheathed sword, accompanied by deputies and constable with long staves, and the Sheriff sat on a raised seat in the court room, with his sword, to preserve order. Mr. Hatheway died in Rome in December, 1836, at the age of seventy-five years.
HENRY HUNTINGTON.
The year Oneida County was formed Henry Huntington, the father of Hon. B. N. Huntington, made Rome his home. In 1800 he was elected Assessor and School Commissioner in Rome. In 1803 Supervisor, and again in 1807. In 1801 he and Joseph Kirk- land, of Utica, ran on opposite tickets for members of the constitu- tional convention, held in October of that year. Without the vote of the town of Mexico, then a part of Oneida County, the number of votes in the county for Mr. Kirkland (a federalist) was seven hundred and forty-eight ; for Mr. Huntington, seven hundred and thirty-eight. All of the vote of Mexico (eighteen votes in all) was cast for Mr. Huntington ; but only two of the three inspectors of election had signed the return, and Jonas Platt, then County Clerk, and a federalist, gave the certificate of election to Mr. Kirkland. Mr. Huntington contested the seat, and the constitu- tional convention, presided over by Aaron Burr, then Vice Presi- dent of the United States, gave it to him. In that contest Rome gave two hundred and seven votes to Mr. Huntington, and none to the other ticket. In 1804 Mr. Huntington was elected to the State Senate, he being the first Senator from Rome. In 1806 he was member of the Council of Appointment, as was De Witt Clin- ton that year; and, although a warm personal and political friend of Mr. Clinton, yet he earnestly protested against the wholesale removals from office made that year by his colleagues in that council, for no reason other than that those turned out were friends of Governor Morgan Lewis. Hammond's Political History speaks of Mr. Huntington as a gentleman and politician of great moderation
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MEN OF EARLY ROME.
and prudence, and altogether incapable of persecution or pro- scription. In 1808 he was chosen by the Legislature Presidential Elector, and of the six votes from New York State given for George Clinton for President, in preference to James Madison, Mr. Huntington's was one. In 1812 he was again appointed Presiden- tial Elector, and all of the votes that year, of this State, were cast for De Witt Clinton for President.
In 1816 he was elected to the Assembly, and the only one on his ticket. It was this Legislature which passed the law abolishing what remained of slavery in this State, after July 4, 1827. A law had been passed in 1801 for a gradual emancipation, by pro- viding that all persons born of slaves after July 4, 1799, (at which time there were twenty thousand slaves in New York State) should be free, except that such persons should, if males, serve as apprentices until they reached twenty-eight years of age, and, if females, until twenty-five; and further providing that slaves could not be witnesses in any case, except against other slaves in criminal trials ; and also requiring owners to instruct their slaves, so that the latter could read the Holy Scriptures. The law passed by the Legislature of 1816 emancipated those after July 4, 1827, who were not freed by the law of 1801. In 1817 Mr. Huntington was elected to the Assembly again, his opponent being Benjamin Wright. In June, 1821, he was elected a member of the constitutional convention, which was held in August of that year, and was presided over by Daniel D. Tompkins, the Vice President of the United States. Mr. Huntington was a mem- ber of the convention of 1801, also presided over by a Vice President, (Aaron Burr.) In 1822 Joseph C. Yates, a republican, ran for Governor, and was elected by one hundred and twenty-six thousand majority over Solomon Southwick, who was self-nomi- nated. Henry Huntington and Erastus Root ran against each other for Lieutenant-Governor, the contest resulting in the election of Mr. Root. In 1826 De Witt Clinton was nominated for Goy- ernor and Henry Huntington for Lieutenant-Governor. Mr.
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Clinton was elected, but Mr. Huntington was defeated by about four thousand, owing to local causes. It seems that a State road had been projected the year previous, to run from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, through the southern tier of counties, and Mr. Pitcher was commissioner of that road; and the friends of that measure fearing that Mr. Huntington was inimical to it, living as. he did on the line of the Erie Canal, just then completed, and believed to be a rival route, the southern portion of the State, and the other counties friendly to that road, cast their votes for Mr. Pitcher. Oneida County, however, gave Mr. Huntington eleven hundred majority. As Mr. Huntington had been in pretty active political life for a quarter of a century, this seems to have closed his political career. In fact, he accepted the above nomination with great reluctance, and after much hesitation and persuasion.
The Bank of Utica was chartered in 1812, and the next year he was elected its second President, and held that position until a short time before his death, a period of thirty-two years. He died in Rome in October, 1846, at the age of eighty years. Although Henry and George Huntington were of opposite politics, and so decidedly and prominently that the party of each nominated him as its candidate for Lieutenant-Governor, yet their business and personal relations were never in the least disturbed, and much of their property was owned in common, and in many instances the partnership funds were used to defray the family expenses of each, and no separate account kept thereof.
There was a number of the legal profession, who came to Rome early in the present century, and although they did not stand out in the county prominently as lawyers, nor figure very conspic- uously in politics, yet they should be mentioned as among the .early members of the Rome bar.
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MEN OF EARLY ROME.
JAMES LYNCII.
Mr. James Lynch graduated at Columbia College in 1799, read Jaw with Joshua Hatheway, and in 1804, was admitted to practice. He opened a law office in Rome, and had charge of his father's lands in this locality. The two main streets in Rome bear the Christian names of father and son-the father when Rome was or- ganized as a town, owning some twenty-five hundred acres of land, which included Fort Stanwix and the site of the whole busi- ness portion of Rome. He succeeded from Rome Mr. George Huntington in the Assembly, and was elected on the federal ticket in the years 1813, 1814 and 1815, all through the hardest part of the war. He moved to Utica in 1818, opened a law office there, and about 1820, he became what was called a "high minded feder- alist," repudiated De Witt Clinton, and went in for D. D. Tomp- kins, and in 1822 was elected to the Assembly. It was the year John E. Hinman was elected Sheriff, over S. Newton Dexter, and E. Dorchester, of the Oneida Observer, County Clerk over Julius Pond. In 1825 Mr. Lynch moved to New York City, became Judge of the Marine Court, and held that position until his death in 1853, at the age of sixty-seven years.
WHEELER BARNES.
Mr. Barnes was born in Massachusetts ; but he came from Ver- mont to Rome, about 1806, being at that time admitted to practice law. He was elected Supervisor of Rome in 1815, and again in 1816, and in the latter year was elected to the Assembly on the federal ticket. He was a member of that Legislature which abol- ished slavery, as heretofore mentioned, and which authorized the commencement of the construction of the Erie Canal. In 1822, Mr. Barnes ran again for the Assembly, but that was the first year after the new constitution of 1821 had gone into effect, and it was
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not a good year for any politician who still held to his federal notions. Mr. Barnes did quite an extensive law practice for those times, and was for a time law partner of William Curtis Noyes. He was trustee of Rome village in 1822, 1823, 1824 and 1825. Not far from 1837, he resided in Oswego, but in a few years he moved back to Rome, and died here in July 1858, at the age of seventy-six years, and as the inscription upon his tomb-stone in the old burying ground reads, " having been a resident of Rome for fifty years."
JAMES SHERMAN.
In 1806, another native of Massachusetts made Rome his perma- nent home. Mr. James Sherman, the new comer, was a graduate of Williams College, and when he came to Rome was twenty-six years of age, and was an admitted attorney. For a year or so, and about 1807, he was a law partner of Joshua Hatheway, and was himself a candidate for the office of Surrogate, and had obtained the necessary recommendations to secure his appoint- ment ; but, on request, gave way to his partner, who was appointed, as has heen heretofore stated. Mr. Sherman was Justice of the Peace for a number of years, and held other towa offices, but did not mix much in county or State politics. He died in Rome in 1823, at the age of forty-three. He was father-in-law of Judge Henry A. Foster.
SETH B. ROBERTS.
Two years before Rome was organized into a town, Seth B. Roberts, then a boy of four years old, came with his parents from Middletown, Conn., to Whitestown, and there resided until about 1809, when he made Rome his residence. He read law with James Lynch; was admitted to the bar in 1816, and opened a law office in Rome. Mr. Lynch, who had acted as the agent for his father
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MEN OF EARLY ROME.
in the leasing of lands and collection of rents in Rome, moved to Utica in 1818, and Mr. Roberts was appointed in his place, which delicate and responsible trust he held for fifty-three years, through the various titles and successive changes of ownership, of that landed property. The duties connected with that trust occupied the main portion of his time, so that he gave but very little atten- tion to law business, nor did he ever become much known, either as a lawyer or as a polititian. He was firm and decided in his political convictions, yet he always sympathized and most gen- erally acted with the party that most strongly favored the tem- perance cause and anti-slavery movement, or had for its object the bettering of the condition and the elevation of the human race. In the strong democratic town of Rome, he was not infrequently elected to town offices, although he was always on the other side in politics. In 1840, he was appointed one of the Judges of the Oneida Common Pleas, and for five years held that office. For sixty years of his life he was a resident of Rome, and the oldest inhabitant can not, through the whole of that period, recall a sin- gle instance where he was seen to be angry, or manifested the least irritation of temper. He who possesses, or can maintain, such an equanimity for such a period of time, is entitled to a place in any history; the recent one of Oneida County not excepted. Without guile in his heart, and with malice toward none and charity for all, he had not while living an enemy in the world, and no one even uttered an unkind word concerning him. He died in October, 1870, in the eighty-first year of his age. Not long before his last illness, while I was in his office, he pointed out to me the little pine table at which he was then writing, and which was the only one he had used since his admission to the bar, fifty-four years before. Is it not almost enough of a relic to entitle it to place in the rooms of the Oneida Historical Society ?
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
CHESTER ILAYDEN.
Not far from 1812 Chester Hayden opened a law office in Rome. He married a sister of James Sherman. He was, for a time, law partner of Wheeler Barnes, and in 1818 was Town Clerk of Rome; ran for Assembly in this county in 1821, and was defeated, and same year he moved to Pulaski and was appointed Surrogate of Oswego County, and held that office for three years. In 1826 he returned to Rome, and was law partner of Henry A. Foster, for a few years thereafter. In 1830 he was appointed First Judge of the Oneida Common Pleas, and about that time moved to Utica, and he held that office until 1840. In 1843 he was appointed side Judge, and held that position for three years. About that time he moved to Albany, and in 1848 he published a legal work on "Practice and Pleadings " under the Code, that year brought into use for the first time. Subsequently he moved to Ohio, where he died a number of years ago, being at his death President and Professor of a law school in that State.
BENJAMIN P. JOHNSON.
Soon after the war of 1812 the father of Benjamin P. Johnson came from Columbia County to Rome, and located here. The father was a practicing physician. Benjamin P. had read law with Elisha Williams, that renowned jury lawyer, of Hudson, Colum- bia County, and was admitted to the bar in this county, in 1817. He was the first Clerk of Rome village, two years afterwards, and held for many years the office of Justice of the Peace, School Commissioner and other town offices-was Commissioner of Deeds, Master in Chancery, &c. In 1826 he was elected to the Assembly and again in 1827 and 1828. He never was prominent as a lawyer, although he had great versatility of talent, and was noted for the accuracy and quickness with which he dispatched business. It is said that he was able to listen to and carry on conversation with
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MEN OF EARLY ROME.
several persons on different subjects, and at the same time draw a contract, or write a letter. In the great religious revival under Mr. Finney, in 1825 and 1826, Mr. Johnson was converted, and in February of the last named year, he united with the Presbyterian church, and about the time as did one hundred and eighty-four others on the same day. Ile was quite active and prominent in church matters, and not far from 1830 was licensed to preach by the Oneida Presbytery, and occupied the pulpit of the Second Church, in Rome, during the occasional absences of its pastor, and also preached at other places, for the then ensuing ten years. There are those yet living who heard Mr. Johnson preach, and who inform me his sermons were able, logical and to the point. It is not an unusual occurrence for persons to leave the ministry for the legal profession, nor for members of the bar to abandon the law and go into the ministry; but the instances are quite rare when a person occupies the pulpit and practices at the bar during the same period of time. It affords evidence that all lawyers are not as bad as they are painted, and that more of them should " practice what they preach."
In 1841 Mr. Johnson was made the first President of the Oneida County Agricultural Society, and for two or three years thereafter he was associated with Mr. Elon Comstock, in the publication of an agricultural paper at Rome. In 1847 he went to Albany and became Secretary and Treasurer of the State Ag- ricultural Society, and held that position for twenty-two years. In 1851 he was delegate or commissioner from this State to the World's Fair, at London; and the information he there gathered, and the sights he there saw, offered him, the opportunity to ad- vance the sphere of usefulness of the Society of which he was Secretary. Mr. Johnson died in Albany, in April, 1869, at the age of seventy-six years. Ilis remains are now in the Rome cemetery.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
JOSEPH B. READ.
In the winter of 1819-20, Joseph B. Read, a schoolmate of Henry A. Foster, came to Rome and entered the law office of Seth B. Roberts, to complete his law studies. He had previously read law in Delphi, Onondaga County. For a number of years he was Justice of the Peace in Rome; was admitted in 1823, and about 1824-5 became a law partner of Mr. Foster. In 1831 he was Trustee of Rome village, and when George Brown, of Rome, in 1832, entered upon his duties as County Clerk, Mr. Read was made his first deputy. His health was then poor, and he far gone with consumption. That fall he started to go south to spend the winter for his health, but he died while on the boat going down the river from Albany to New York.
SAMUEL BEARDSLEY.
Prior to 1810, a young man, then of Otsego County, commenced the study of medicine in the office of the celebrated Dr. White, of Cherry Valley, with a view to becoming a practicing physician. He was about eighteen years of age, and with such an education as the common schools of the country then afforded. He sup- ported himself by teaching district schools in winter, that he might, in summer, study for a profession. Having occasion to attend court at Cooperstown, he was so charmed with the trial of causes, and with legal proceedings in court, that he expressed to Joshua Hatheway, of Rome, who then chanced to be at court at Cooperstown, a notion and a desire to exchange the study of the medical, for that of the legal profession. He was encouraged so to do, and invited to become a student in Mr. Hatheway's office. The invitation was accepted, and Samuel Beardsley came to Rome ; boarded in the family of Mr. Hatheway; read law; tended post office, and assisted in the Surrogate's Court, all in the same office, then on the site now occupied by "Elm Row " buildings. The
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MEN OF EARLY ROME.
studies of Mr. Beardsley were again interrupted, not by peaceful pursuits, but by the stern realities of war. The northern frontier of New York was invaded by British troops, and in 1813 Mr. Beardsley went to Sacketts Harbor to assist in the defense of his country. On his return to Rome he completed his legal studies ; was admitted to the bar in 1815; took up his residence in Water- town for a year; returned to Rome and opened a law office; mar- ried a daughter of Judge Hatheway, and was law partner of James Lynch for a short time. He was Town Clerk of Rome in 1817; Supervisor in 1818, 1819 and 1820. In 1821 he was ap- pointed District Attorney in place of Nathan Williams-on the same day that his father-in-law was made Surrogate of the County. In 1822 Mr. Beardsley, Thomas Greenly, of Madison County, Sherman Wooster, of Herkimer, and Alvin Bronson, of Oswego, were elected Senators from this District, over George Huntington and his associates. This was the first election under the new Constitution of 1821, and it is a singular fact, and worthy of mention, that the democrats elected, that year, the whole thirty-two Senators in the State-a victory no party had won since the formation of the State Government. And it is also worth while to note, that of all of these Senators elected that year, the above named Alvin Bronson is the only one who survives, He is yet living at Oswego, having passed his ninety-seventh birthday.
Mr. Beardsley drew for the short term in the Senate, and served but one year. In 1823 he was appointed by Presi- dent James Monroe, United States District Attorney for this District. Soon after his appointment as United States District Attorney in 1823, Mr. Beardsley moved from Rome to Utica. Many Romans yet remember the frame house that stood sixty years ago on the present site of the Tremont House, and of Mr. Beardsley's residence there, and of his office in the wing attached. In 1830 Mr. Beardsley was elected to Congress by sixteen hundred and forty-eight majority over S. N. Dexter who ran as the anti-Jackson and anti-masonic candidate.
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Mr. Beardsley's majority in Rome, was one hundred and eighty- four. Fortune C. White ran as the workingman's candidate, and received three votes in Rome, and two hundred and forty-nine in the county. On his election to Congress he resigned the office of United States District Attorney. In 1832, he ran the second time for Congress, and was elected over Charles P. Kirkland, by about six hundred majority in the county. In January, 1831, Governor Marcy tendered to Mr. Beardsley the office of Circuit Judge for this judicial district ; but as President Jackson needed his services and the democratic party his vote in Congress, he declined the proffered appointment, and Hiram Denio was appointed in the fall of that same year. Mr. Beardsley ran again for Congress, and was elected over Joshua A. Spencer. In 1836 he was appointed At- torney General, and in 1842, he was again elected to Congress over Charles P. Kirkland. In February, 1844, Governor Bouck appointed Mr. Beardsley Supreme Court Judge, and three years later he was made Chief Justice, and held that office until the constitution of 1846 went iuto effect. Mr. Beardsley was a democrat of the strict- est sect, the hardest of the " hards " in the time of that party. I was present in the Cincinnati Convention of 1856, twenty-three years ago the coming June, when James Buchanan was nominated for the Presidency, and when Mr. Beardsley headed that half part of the New York delegation called " hunkers;" and when he arose and an- nounced that " the National democracy of New York cast seventeen votes for James Buchanan for President," there was a seeming rel- ish to him, in the way he said " National," and announced that result in the face of the " soft " portion of that delegation. Mr. Beards- ley was one of the very few who could and did take an active part in politics, for over thirty years of an unusually busy life and yet stood on a level at the bar and on the bench with the ablest lawyers in the land, and head and shoulders above a large majority of his fellows. On his retiring from judicial duties, for it can hardly be said he ever retired from taking a great interest in politics, he opened a law office in New York City for a while, de- voting himself wholly to counsel business, retaining however his
مقد معلش
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MEN OF EARLY ROME.
residence in Utica. He died in the latter city, May 6, 1860, the very day he had attained the age of seventy years and three months.
DANIEL WARDWELL.
In 1812, when Samuel Beardsley was reading law in the office of Mr. Hatheway, tending post office and boarding in the family of of his then future father-in-law, he had for a fellow boarder and student a young man a couple of months younger than himself, who had graduated the year before from Brown University in Rhode Island, and that year came with his father's family to Rome and settled at the "Ridge." That fellow student and boarder was Daniel Wardwell, who the next year went into the office of Gold & Sill of Whitesboro, and was admitted to the Jefferson Common Pleas in 1814 while for a brief time a resident of that county. He married a daughter of Newton Mann, lived and practiced law in Rome in 1816 and 1817, his office being a small frame building near where the Sentinel office now is. In 1820 he lived in Utica, and soon after moved to Jefferson County; and 1824 was appointed by Governor Yates, side Judge of that county. It was in his office in 1821 at Adams, that Rev. Charles G. Finney, who after- ward became the noted revivalist, was reading law at the time of his conversion, and thereupon abandoned the law for the ministry. Mr. Wardwell was elected member of Assembly from Jefferson County 1825, 1826 and 1827. In 1826 he was the means of caus- ing great commotion at Albany, New York and the river counties, by his introduction into the Assembly and advocacy of a resolu- tion favoring the removal of the State Capital to Utica or some other central point. The project took like wild fire in the central and western part of the State, and public meetings were held at Utica, presided over and taken part in by its leading and promi- nent citizens in favor of the proposition. I regret to add, the measure failed, and it does not look now as if it would be carried for the next fifty years. In 1828, in the exciting Presidential
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS.
contest between Jackson and Adams, Mr. Wardwell ran for State Senator in this district, on the Jackson ticket. His opponent was William II. Maynard of Utica. Masonry or anti-masonry was then one of the exciting topics of the canvass. The election was close, but Mr. Maynard was elected by about three hundred majority. In return for this defeat, the Jefferson county district elected Mr. Wardwell to Congress for three successive terms, the first time in 1830, and which was for a longer time than any other person has been elected from that county. It is worth while to note that he was elected for the same three terms and in the same years, as was his fellow law student Mr. Beardsley from this county, and that both were warm personal and political friends, and were among the most determined adherents and supporters of President Jackson all through the stormy period of his adminis- tration. Daniel Wardwell and Samuel Beardsley were for so many years in such close contact and fellowship with Presi- dent Jackson, it has often seemed to me as if they had much of the unyielding purpose, unbending integrity and Roman firmness of that fearless statesman. In the last year of Mr. Wardwell's life, after his mind had passed into the penumbra of that eclipse from which it never fully emerged, while his conversation wall- dered on all other subjects, a recurrence to or calling up of the stormy times when he was in Congress, seemed to remove the clouds from his mental vision, to bring light and flash to his eye, determination in his look, as if those scenes were again passing in review before him, and as if ready to exclaim like Bonaparte in his wild delirium at St. Helena, "the head of the army !" Mr. Wardwell was elected to the Assembly for the fourth time in 1837 from Jefferson county. He became a resident of Rome again in 1860, and died here in March, 1878, lacking but a month of his eighty-seventh birthday.
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