USA > New York > New York City > History of the Court of common pleas of the city and county of New York : with full reports of all important proceedings > Part 8
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Always attentive to duty, he has required the same attention from those under him, and has thus earned the reputation of a disciplinarian.
Though the youngest Judge on the Common Pleas Bench, his record was most satisfactory to both the bar and the public, and he has rapidly acquired a reputa- tion as one of the best trial Judges of our time.
Judge Giegerich was married in 1887 to Miss Louise M. Boll, of New York City, and they have had several children.
By the Constitution of 1894 Judge Giegerich was transferred to the Supreme Court.
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THE NEW ORGANIZATION OF THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, JULY 1, 1870.
The amended New York State Constitution of 1869 provided for the election of three additional Judges of the Court of Common Pleas. In pursuance of this provision, Hamilton W. Robinson, Joseph F. Daly and Richard L. Larremore were chosen as such Judges at the election in the city of New York held in May, 1869.
According to the statute they were to enter upon the duties of their office on the first of July, 1870. The oath of office was administered to them at noon. The ceremony took place in the large room of the trial term, Part I. of the Common Pleas. At the appointed hour all the seats and standing places were occupied, mainly by Judges and members of the bar.
Among those who occupied seats upon the platform, in addition to the Common Pleas Judges, were Judge Woodruff, of the United States Court; Judges Bos- worth, Mitchell, Henry E. Davies, late Chief Justice of the Court of Appeals; Pierrepont, Slosson, Vanvorst, Judge Brady, of the Supreme Court; Messrs. Chas. O'Conor, Peter Cooper, Smith Barker, J. W. Gerard, Judges Jones, Fithian and Freedman, of the Superior Court; Henry Nicoll, N. J. Waterbury and Wm. M. Evarts. Among those present beside these, were notably : Messrs. Luther R. Marsh, Augustus F. Smith, A. J.
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Vanderpoel, Algernon S. Sullivan, Henry Brewster, Jesse K. Furlong, Frank Byrne, Amos G. Hull, Henry Morrison, Mr. Devine, Wm. H. Ingersoll, D. Marvin, J. M. Scribner, Wm. Edelsten, Dennis McMahon, Frederick Smythe, Clarence A. Seward, Mr. Pinckney, Mr. Spink and Justice Quinn.
Chief Justice Chas. P. Daly administered the usual oath of office to the three new Judges severally, after which he announced that in consequence of the addi- tional number of Judges in that Court, some alterations had been made in the rules, which would be made known to the bar in due time.
ADDRESS OF MR. J. W. GERARD.
Mr. James W. Gerard then addressed the audience at some length. He had, he said, never been a Judge; no politician or lawyer had ever thought of making him one, though why he did not know. He had for a long time believed that he possessed some of the attributes of a Judge. The speaker gave a history of the Court of Common Pleas, from the time when, more than 200 years ago, this same Court was known as the Court of the Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriff of New Amsterdam. This Court was the oldest one in the State. Peter Stuyvesant was one of the first Judges. In that day the Court was always opened with prayer. (The speaker here read the prayer used upon such occasions and pro- nounced it to be a model prayer in its simplicity and purity of thought.) In those days they did what we have finally concluded to do-that is, allow all parties to be witnesses for themselves in both civil and crim- inal cases. They had juries then, but the Dutchmen
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did not like that system much, and generally preferred to have their causes heard before a Judge. Peter Stuy- vesant, he said, authorized the first fee bill in New York. His doctrine was that lawyers should "serve the poor gratis for God's sake." We make it up in charging the rich man. Within a hundred yards of the Court House, Mr. Gerard said, he had seen a man tied to the whipping post and whipped according to a judicial decision, for an offense committed in the post- office. Sometimes they put the offenders in the stocks and threw rotten eggs at them. In 1665, the name was changed to the Mayor's Court, and so continued for about 160 years, or until about the year 1821, when it was altered to the Court of Common Pleas. The speaker recited a long list of names of those who had occupied seats on the bench of the Common Pleas, and also those who were prominent practioners at its bar. Among them he mentioned DeWitt Clinton, the father of the Erie Canal; Cadwallader Colden, Col. Willett, Samuel Jones, the grandfather of a Judge now on the Superior Court Bench; Matthew Livingston, Pierre C. Van Wyck, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, Richard Riker, John T. Irving, brother of Washington Irving, the poet; Martin S. Wilkins, Elisha W. King, Gen. Robert Bogardus, David Graham, Jr., and John Leveridge. The address of Mr. Gerard was delivered in his usually humorous vein, and was frequently relieved by anec- dotes.
ADDRESS OF MR. AUGUSTUS F. SMITH.
Mr. A. F. Smith spoke of the Court of Common Pleas, since he commenced to practice in it, a little more
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than a quarter of a century ago. The bar must recol- lect that this Court, during the last quarter of a cen- tury, was a very different tribunal from what it was during the times of which Mr. Gerard had spoken. In those early days, there was only one Judge. The Court could not be held more than two days at one term, nor could there be more than four terms in a year, and only eight attorneys were allowed to practice in the Court. He spoke of Judge Irving, who for seventeen years was a Judge of this Court, and who for fourteen years of that time was the sole Judge. He did not propose to compare him with his brother, Washington Irving. What lawyer was there whose name will be known in future generations except in the way of anecdote and legend ? At the meeting of the bar recently held in regard to the death of Mr. F. B. Cutting, he heard it stated that the deceased owed his great success to friends and family influence, who enabled him suddenly to reach the height of his profession. The speaker wished to say to the young members of the bar that he did not believe any man ever achieved success at the bar by means of friends. Something was undoubtedly due to circumstances, but it must be by honesty, indus- try, perseverance, and a faithful discharge of duty to clients, that any success worth retaining can be attained in the legal profession.
Mr. Luther R. Marsh was the next and last speaker.
ADDRESS OF MR. LUTHER R. MARSH.
I suppose I may consider myself commissioned to unite with the gentlemen who have spoken, in virtue of having represented the first cause which
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appears in the regular series of the reported cases in this Court-a cause in which no one else survives of the parties, attorneys, counsel or witnesses, though only fifteen years have since elapsed. The people of the State of New York, as well as of the city, let us hope, have good cause to congratulate themselves on the changes just wrought in their judicial system by the amended Constitution. Among them, the lengthened tenure of office is a decided improvement-reaching, as now established, to about half a generation-more than half of what may fairly be considered the average busi- ness life of man. This makes the judgeship a sort of life-work; and while Judges are men, with considerable human nature in them, it must necessarily induce a feeling of greater security and a more absolute inde- pendance of judgment. Among these changes, the new features engrafted upon this Court of Common Pleas for the City and County of New York-by which its numerical power is doubled-and it, no longer dependent on legislative will, has struck the flukes of its anchor into the Constitution itself. The ceremony we witness this day is one of great significance. It is not merely the usual result of an election; filling im- portant offices either with former incumbents or a new personality. It is not the retirement of certain men from judicial stations they had occupied, and the advance of other men to supply the vacancy. If it were that, and only that, it would be an imposing cere- mony. The smooth and peaceful change of power, from hand to hand, is, of itself, a sublime event. The advent of a new priest at the altar; of a new represen- tative of justice; of one who is to stand with absolute
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impartiality, between contending litigants; who is to see that wantonness and selfishness do not override justice and right, to hold, with steady nerve, those hal- lowed scales, which shall weigh to each applicant his due, and shall pronounce all forms of injustice, wanting, in the balance; to guard the doctrines settled by the Courts, so that uniformity shall be maintained, and men may know the standard by which their rights and duties are to be squared, to enforce the will of the whole people as expressed in the enactments of their Legislature-such an inauguration is an event ever to be regarded with interest. But this is all that, and something more. It is an enlargement of the altar itself. It is, in effect, adding a new Court of equal power and jurisdiction to the one already existing. It
is launching anew with enlarged capacities, and age renewed, this ancient and most useful Court, the oldest judicial tribunal in our State, which begun its life of toil and duty, though under another name, two hun- dred and five years ago, this just retreating month of June; which saw this great city of ours in its struggling youth, and whose roots are deep and firm in the primal soil of our own liberty. An interesting epoch, there- fore, in the history of this Court, do we behold this day. Of the many changes of added or diminished function which have occurred in its organization during the last two centuries, this is not the least. But though it enters this day on a new career-let us believe for yet other centuries to come-and though most of the pres- ent and now newly inaugurated ministers of its power are untried to its bench, though not to its bar, yet does not, nor will this tribunal seem strange to its habitual
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practioners, as long as he, who is more intimately iden- tified with the Court than any of his predecessors, and to whom we are indebted for the biography of the Court itself, continues to be a participant in its author- ity. Of those who have enunciated the law from this seat, some have departed to the Grand Assize: Edward Livingston, De Witt Clinton, Jacob Radcliffe, Col. Marinus Willett, Cadwallader D. Colden, John T. Irv- ing and William Inglis. Others have been transferred to other tribunals, where they are now at work: Michael Ulshoeffer, to the quiet but efficient administration of the Referee's office; Daniel P. Ingraham, Albert Cardozo and John R. Brady to the Supreme Court; and Lewis B. Woodruff, first to the Superior Court, then to the Court of Appeals, and now to the Federal Judiciary; while yet others, Henry Hilton, Hooper C. Van Vorst, and George C. Barrett, have returned to the forum, to invoke the very powers they wielded from its bench. But the Presiding Judge remains faithful to his first love; and that familiar form, which, for twen- ty-six years, has occupied this bench may be seen there still. Let it be our prayer and hope that this honora- able Court, venerable by its days, but fresh in its vigor, may ever boast as able and upright Judges in the com- ing years, as in the past, and preserve its ermine as immaculate, that it may still hold in order the surging interests of this commercial community, and that it may continue to rear and educate advocates in its arena, who, like Emmet, Jay and Samson, of a former day, and, more recently, like Brady, so lately gone, and Cutting, yesterday laid at his rest, shall add to its use- fulness, its honor and its renown.
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PROCEEDINGS ON THE DEATH OF JUDGE HAMILTON W. ROBINSON, APRIL 24, 1879.
The next proceedings of any especial moment on the part of the bar of the City and County of New York in connection with the Court of Common Pleas, took place on Thursday, April 24, 1879, at the Court House New York City. On that day a meeting of the bench and bar was held to commemorate the life and services of the Honorable Hamilton W. Robinson, who died April 7, 1879, during his term of office as Judge of the Court. Chief Justice Charles P. Daly presided over the meeting. The vice-presidents were the Honorables Noah Davis, George C. Barrett, Gilbert M. Speir, John Sedgwick, William G. Choate, John K. Porter, Stephen D. Law, John R. Brady, A. R. Law- rence, Hooper C. Van Vorst, J. J. Freedman, Charles O'Conor, William A. Beach, Charles Donohue, William E. Curtis, Charles F. Sanford, Samuel Blatchford, David Dudley Field, Lucien Birdseye.
The secretaries were: Messrs. John M. Scribner, James J. Thomson, Douglass Campbell and James T. Law.
Resolutions eulogizing Judge Robinson were passed at the meeting and ordered to be entered on the minutes of the Court. Addresses were made by Messrs. A. J. Vanderpoel, Luther R. Marsh; by ex- Judge Lucien Birdseye and Judges Hooper C. Van Vorst and Charles P. Daly.
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ADDRESS OF MR. A. J. VANDERPOEL.
We have met to pay respect to the memory of the late Hamilton W. Robinson. While this tribute is due to his character as a lawyer and as a Judge, it is also a tribute and token of our respect and affection for him as a man.
For nine years he has been a member of the bench of the Court of Common Pleas of the City and County of New York. Thirty years of hard labor and varied practice at the bar had thoroughly fitted him for this position, from which an all-wise Providence has removed him in the prime of life and season of usefulness. He was justly noted for the patient study and careful pre- parations of his cases, and every question likely to arise was fully investigated and brought to the test of his well-balanced mind. In his bearing he was diffi- dent and unobtrusive; in his friendships, cordial and sincere. As a Judge he always remembered "that a Judge must never be allow himself to be warped or trammelled, and must ever maintain the free employ- ment of a watchful and unbiased mind."
Mr. Vanderpoel then offered the following resolu- tions:
Resolved, That by the death of Judge Hamilton W. Robinson, we have lost one who was an honor to the judiciary and to our profession. His urbanity of man- ner while at the bar and on the bench, his sincerity of heart and faithfulness to duty had endeared him to us; while his learning, probity and justice command for him universal respect. We cherish pleasant recollec- tions of his well-spent life, and revere his memory as an able and upright Judge.
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-
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LUTHER R. MARSH.
Resolved, That the proceedings of this meeting be presented to the Court of which Judge Robinson was a member, with the request that they be entered upon its minutes.
ADDRESS OF MR. LUTHER R. MARSH.
MR. PRESIDENT :- In rising to second the resolutions presented by Mr. Vanderpoel, which so truly deplore our loss, a few additional words may not be out of place.
So rapid are the changes in our bar; such a tide of new practitioners is constantly poured into it from all sections of the nation, that there are many here, no doubt, who have only known him-whose loss has called us together-in his office as a Judge.
There are some present-among them his class-mates Judge Speir and Samuel Campbell-whose memories hold the slender form of a beaming and studious youth at college; ambitious of honor, free from any evil habits, and on terms of cheerful amity with all his co- collegiates.
Some, too, here, remember him, when afterwards graduated from college, and from a counsellor's office, he had taken rank as a lawyer at Albany, where there were centered many men famous in the records of the bar.
Some too, remember him when, seeking a wider field, he encountered the hazards of a removal to this city, where only courage, effort and pertinacity could secure a foothold, and by his modest sign announced that he would give his time and labor to those who should intrust their interests to his hands.
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He returned, temporarily, to 'Albany to officiate as deputy attorney-general under Mr. Van Buren; and, subsequently, they united in partnership, and so for many years continued in New York, where a clientage, large in volume and responsible in character and amount, grew up around them; numbering in its list George Law, and the great and varied interests he controlled.
The services of almost every lawyer are, at one time or another, called into use as a mutually selected arbiter; and for this Judge Robinson developed such a special adaptation that he became, and was several years, our most active and prominent referee-thus be- coming especially educated to the duties of the office he was subsequently to fill. The proportion of causes dis- posed of by referees is very large; and they are often of the most troublesome and complex kind, involving many- itemed accounts, which a jury cannot try. The referee unites in himself the functions of juror and Judge; and, but for him, I do not see how the Courts could keep abreast of the accumulated business of the time. Of these referees, as I have said, Judge Robinson was, in his day, the most conspicuous; and such quantities of references flocked to his office, either by mutual consent or the compulsory orders of the Courts, that he might often be seen presiding at the trial of two, three, and even four causes at the same time-walking through his ample rooms to the various tables, and disposing of questions of pleading and evidence as he passed.
Judge Robinson, when he came to the bench, had well withstood the strain of his professional labors. He was, I believe, in perfect health. It is a question
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of some moment whether, if he had remained at the bar, he would not now have been living and in full capacity. So many of our judiciary have become impaired in health, that it suggests a very serious inquiry as to the cause. Comes the trouble from the over-breathed air of crowded rooms, or from the per- petual and unrelieved stress of judicial duties-pecu- liarly responsible and exhausting-or from the joint effect of both ?
And yet it would not seem to be safe to deduce any general principle from a limited range of facts; for on that very bench in which this sad vacancy occurs, there presides a jurist who has administered at its shrine for more than a generation; who has carried on besides, immense concurrent labors; who has gathered and recorded the annals of that historic Court; who has been ever ready to take part in all public meetings and aid in all public enterprises; who, by his wise devo- tion to geographic science, has made his name famil- iar and respected over the world, and yet, who still bears the evidence of health undiminished and vigor unimpaired.
It was a pernicious habit-induced by his sensitively nervous organization and the anxieties of his office- which used to drive our departed friend, at midnight, from his bed to his table, when many of his opinions were written and revised. He must possess a large original stock of vitality whose constitution can long sustain the drafts upon it required by the intense and varied application of the daytime in our city practice, and carry protracted labor into the night besides. An
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habitual encroachment on the domain and jurisdiction of
" Tired Nature's sweet restorer-balmy sleep,"
is, sooner or later, sure to be avenged.
He was a faithful and concentrate worker. But not- withstanding the remarkable facility with which he wrote, he used to revise and re-revise till his manu- script opinions almost required a Champollion to decipher them. I have been reminded, sometimes, while puzzling over his manuscripts, of a paper I saw when a student at Utica. There was, in the office of the late Charles A. Mann, a chest of historical docu-
ments left by Richard Varick. Amongst them, a draft petition to Congress, by Baron Steuben, for some additional aid, as I remember it. It was in the hand- writing of Alexander Hamilton-whose pellucid style vindicates his renown as a writer-from whom, by the way, our late friend derived a portion of his name-and its erasures and interlineations evinced that it was not struck off at white heat, and at a blow; that it did not drop without labor from the nibs of the pen; but had received many a careful revision and correction.
It was, however, in his social relations-in the com- pany of his family and friends-that Robinson was king. His supremacy there was affectionately acknowledged. It is believed that he never lost a friend; rather, he bound them to him with enduring cords. Some of his boyhood and college classmates have kept up with him, through the vicissitudes of life, the most intimate relations; and we may only witness the afflicting sor- row they express, to know how supremely he reigned in the domain of the affections.
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His great pleasure was to spend the Summers on his ancestral acres at Worcester, in the County of Otsego, where he dispensed a charming and bountiful hospi- tality. He dreamed in his illness that the crisp air of the Otsego hills-resinous with the delicious odor of the woods-would renew his strength, like the eagle's; and that could he but touch his mother earth, he would, Antæus-like, receive new vigor in his frame. But he had approached too near the confine for any natural means to bring him back. And so, his mission here ended, he has gone to join the generations on the other side of the line; where our friends, in large majority, already are; the ultimate destination and home of all.
ADDRESS OF EX-JUDGE LUCIEN BIRDSEYE.
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN :- My long acquaint- ance with Judge Robinson, the kindness with which he welcomed me to the ranks of the profession, and the earnest regard which was the fruit of my long intercourse with him, render it a privilege to me, pain- ful indeed but real, to join in these tributes to his memory.
When I commenced practice in Albany, Mr. Robin- son had been some years at the bar. Although, while there, he had been but the junior member of his firm- that of MacKown, Van Buren & Robinson-he had already made his mark as a lawyer. Mr. MacKown was Recorder of Albany. Presiding as he did at the monthly sessions of his Court, and feeling the burdens of his great age and increasing infirmity, he had sub- stantially withdrawn from active participation in the business of the firm. The tastes and aptitudes of Mr.
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Van Buren led him to engage in the contests of the bar and of the political arena, rather than in the severe studies and what to so many seem the dry labors of the law office; while these were precisely adapted to the tastes, and called forth all the powers of Mr. Rob- inson. Thus the business of the firm had passed at an early day into the hands of Mr. Robinson.
He, however, left that firm, and came to New York to engage in practice. I think his residence here at that period was too brief to do much more than prove his sagacity in selecting the field of his life's labors, and the real strength of character which underlaid all his modesty and self-distrust. For, without both sagac- ity and force of will, he would not have ventured into such a field.
When Mr. Van Buren was chosen attorney-general . he induced Mr. Robinson to return to Albany to act as his chief assistant in that office, while he himself be- came still more completely the popular advocate and orator.
Taking up also the business of his former firm, the preparation of pleadings, opinions and briefs fully occupied his time, and led him far and wide in legal studies and examinations. At this period of his life, and indeed for many years afterwards, he was but rarely seen, and still more rarely heard in the Courts.
The bar of Albany was then a very strong one. Among those most frequently seen and heard in the Courts, and who were famous throughout the State and beyond it, were, besides Mr. Van Buren himself, such men as Samuel Stevens, Marcus T. Reynolds, Daniel Cady, Teunis Van Vechten, Nicholas Hill, Rufus W.
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Peckham, Azor Taber, Julius Rhoades, Deodatus. Wright, Henry C. Wheaton, Samuel H. Hammond and others.
But besides these men, famous as advocates and orators, there was then in Albany, as there must be at every bar, a class of men marked by characteristics very different.
Of retiring dispositions, distrusting themselves in the active contests before Courts and juries, hardly becoming accustomed or willing to hear their own voices, but yet knowing well their own powers of study and examination and logical statement, they gave: themselves up to the labors of the office and library, rather than of the Court room. They made the deep, researches into legal principles; prepared the careful array of authorities, and made the thorough prepara- tions for trials and arguments, which, after all, are the real ground of professional success.
Among the men of this class were Gideon Hawley, Cyrus Stevens, George W. Peckham, Peter Cagger, Stephen D. Van Schaick our late lamented Surro- gate in this city; Mr. Robinson and others. Some of these men, either by the native force of their character, or under the pressure of circumstances, as when the advocate of the firm had fallen, or been laid aside, overcame the modesty of their natures, and became useful and successful in the more active and public uses. of the Courts.
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