USA > New York > Oneida County > Rome > Our city and its people : a descriptive work on the city of Rome, New York > Part 16
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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 part- ner of Weeeler 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
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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, being at his death president and professor of a law school in that State.
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, Columbia county, and was ad- mitted 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, etc. 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 conver- sation with 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 Feb- ruary of the last named year, he united with the Presbyterian church, and about the time as did 184 others on the same day. He 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
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years. It is not an unusual occurrence for persons to leave the minis- try 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 there- after he was associated with 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 Agricultural Society, and held that position for twenty-two years. In 1851 he was delegate or commis- sioner from this State to the World's Fair, at London ; and the infor- mation he there gathered, and the sights he there saw, offered him the opportunity to advance 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. His remains are now in the Rome cemetery.
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, On- ondaga 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. The 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.
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 of becoming a practicing physician. He was about
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eighteen years of age, and with such an education as the common schools of the country then afforded. He supported himself by teach- ing 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 the causes, and with legal proceedings in court, that he expressed to Joshua Hathaway, 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 en- couraged so to do, and invited to become a student in Mr. Hathaway's office. The invitation was accepted, and Samuel Beardsley came to Rome ; boarded in the family of Mr. Hathaway; 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 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 Sackett's 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 Watertown for a year ; returned to Rome and opened a law office ; married a daughter of Judge Hathaway, and was law part- ner 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 appointed 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. Beards- ley, Thomas Greenly, of Madison county, Sherman Wooster, of Herki- mer, 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. Mr. Beardsley drew for the short
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term in the Senate, and served but one year. In 1823 he was appointed by President James Monroe, United States district attorney for this dis- trict. Soon after his appointment as United States district attorney in 1823, Mr. Beardsley moved from Rome to Utica. In 1830 he was elected to Congress by 1,648 majority over S. N. Dexter who ran as the anti- Jackson and anti-Masonic candidate. Mr. Beardsley's major. ity in Rome was 184. Fortune C. White ran as the workingman's can- didate, and received three votes in Rome, and 249 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 600 majority in the county. In January, 1834, 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 attorney- general, and in 1842 he was again elected to Congress over Charles P. Kirkland. In February, 1844, Governor Bouck appointed Mr. Beards- ley Supreme Court judge, and three years later he was made chief jus- tice, and held that office until the Constitution of 1846 went into effect. Mr. Beardsley was a Democrat of the strictest sect, the hardest of the " hards " in the time of that party. He 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 poli- . tics, he opened a law office in New York city for a while, devoting him- self wholly to counsel business, retaining however his 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.
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In 1812, when Samuel Beardsley was reading law in the office of Mr. Hathaway, tending post office and boarding in the family of his then future father-in-law, he had a fellow boarder and student a young man a couple of months younger than himself, who had graduated 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 Con- mon 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 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 O. Finney, who afterward become 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 assem- bly from Jefferson county 1825, 1826 and 1827. In 1826 he was the means of causing great commotion at Albany, New York and the river counties, by his introduction into the Assembly and advocacy of a resolution favoring the removing 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, pre- sided over and taken part in by its leading and prominent citizens in favor of the proposition. Unfortunately that measure failed. In 1828, in the exciting presidential contest between Jackson and Adams, Mr. Wardwell ran for State senator in his district. His opponent was William H. 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 300 majority. In return for this defeat, the Jefferson county district elected Mr. Wardwell to Congress for three
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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 coun- ty, 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 administration. Daniel Wardwell and Samuel Beardsley were for so many years in such close contact and fellowship with President Jackson, it has often seemed 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 wan- 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 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 resi- dent of Rome again in 1860, and died here in March, 1878, lacking but a month. of his eighty .seventh birthday.
Hiram Denio was born in Wright Settlement, obtained all his educa- tion in town except what he obtained at Fairfield Academy ; read law at first with Wheeler Barnes, and afterwards with Storrs & White of Whitesboro; was admitted to the bar in 1821 ; opened a law office in Rome ; was appointed in 1825 district attorney of the county, to suc- ceed Samuel Beardsley, and about that time moved to Utica. In 1834 he was appointed circuit judge, and after four years was compelled to resign by reason of ill health ; held the office of bank commissioner from 1838 to 1841 ; was clerk of the old Supreme Court from about 1840 1
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to 1845 ; was Supreme Court reporter from 1845 to 1847, as the five vol- umes of Denio's Reports attest ; in June, 1853, he was appointed by Governor Seymour to fill a vacancy in the Court of Appeals, and in the fall of that year was elected over Judge Mullin ; when his term ran out fourteen years later, he was renominated. It is a little singular, that as decided a Democrat as Judge Denio was, and as inti- mate as he, Judge Beardsley, Judge Foster, Greene C. Bronson and other Democrats were in politics, he never attended conven - tions nor aspired to political office. That he was a lawyer and judge, however, second to none in the State, all concede. He died in Novem- ber, 1871.
In November, 1819, a young man, but a few months past nineteen years of age, came from the office of Beach & Popple, attorneys and counselors at Oswego, to Rome, and entered the law office of James Sherman, to complete his law studies. At that time, to be an attorney and counselor of the Supreme Court required a previous course of study of seven years. Two and a half years of that time had been passed by that student, commencing in 1815, in the law office at Caz- enovia, of David B. Johnson, father of D. M. K. Johnson, of Rome. In 1818 he read law at Onondaga Hill, then the county seat of Onondaga county, in the office of B. Davis Noxon, who subsequently became an eminent lawyer in Central New York, and was father of Judge Noxon, of Syracuse. When Henry A. Foster entered the law office of James Sherman, as above stated, the Erie Canal between Rome and Utica was but just completed and brought into use. There were at that time six lawyers in Rome, viz .: Joshua Hathaway, Wheeler Barnes, James Sherman, Samuel Beardsley, S. B. Roberts, and B. P. Johnson. Mr. Hathaway devoted most of his time to official duties, Mr. Roberts had charge of the Lynch estate, and Mr. Johnson had been admitted only a couple of years. In those days the oldest as well as the foremost members of the bar practiced in Justice's Court whenever an opportu- 26
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nity offered, and tried. causes therein with as much zeal and tenacity as in courts of record. For a law student to obtain a livelihood, when he had to compete in those courts with experienced and influential practi- tioners, it was requisite he should be one of more than ordinary pluck, industry and intelligence. It was only for a few years previous that anybody could practice in Justices' Courts, for, as the law stood prior to 1812, justices of the peace were prohibited by positive law from allowing any one to appear in their courts as an advocate, or to try causes, except in cases of the sickness of the suitor. But in April, 1812, that law was repealed, and the preamble to the repealing clause reads so quaintly yet so truthfully, and withal sounds so oddly at the present day, that we are tempted to copy it. It reads: "Whereas it often happens that suitors are wanting in ability to do justice to their own causes, or are deserted by that presence of mind which is the requi- site to command or bring into use such abilities as they may actually possess ; and whereas it is a constitutional right which every person has, to employ assistance in all lawful business, therefore the above sec- tion is repealed.". It is an acknowledgment of an old saying, that he who tries his own cause has a fool for a client. It was well understood that whenever Mr. Foster was in a law case, even when a law student, that in the vernacular of the present day, "it meant business." In 1822 he was admitted to the bar, and within three hours after his ad- mission to the Common Pleas, he was assigned by the court to defend a person who was indicted for petit larceny, second offense, the offense having been committed before the first conviction. In the judicial rec- ords of Oneida county are the notes of a trial, which took place that year at the General Sessions, before Judges Joshua Hathaway, Truman Enos and Samuel Jones. Samuel Beardsley was district attorney. As the law now is, a person convicted for the first time of petit larceny, is liable to imprisonment only, in the county jail, and if convicted of a similar offense, after the first conviction, then the punishment is by im-
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prisonment in the State prison. The statute as it then read provided for the punishment, by imprisonment in the State Prison, " of every person who should be a second time, or oftener, convicted of petit lar- ceny," without saying (as the law now does) that the second offense must be committed, after a conviction for a former theft. The objec- tion was taken by Mr. Foster, that this could not be a State prison offense, as the indictment did not allege nor the proofs show, that the offense was committed after a previous conviction ; but that in fact, the conviction was for the second offense; that the intent and spirit of the statute were to work a reformation of the offender, by increasing the punishment, for offenses committed after a conviction ; but if this was a State Prison offense, then the punishment was the greater for the first offense. The district attorney relied upon the literal reading of the statute, and for two hours the respective counsel argued that question of law to the court. Two of the judges held with the district attor-
ney, and the other one with Mr. Foster, and so the case had to go to the jury. As jurors in those days were popularly considered judges of the law as well as of the fact in criminal trials, the prisoner's counsel summed up to the jury on that theory and on that question of law, and for two hours the counsel on both sides argued to the jury as to the construction which should be given to that statute, without either side
hardly touching upon the merits of the case, as to the guilt or inno- cence of the accused. The jury took the law of the case into their own
hands, construed the statute differently from the two judges, and on that question of law acquitted the prisoner! With such a "send off" at the commencement of a professional career and when but twenty- two years old, it can hardly be supposed Mr. Foster ever lacked for clients. A few years later, the same question came up again in this county, and was carried to the Supreme Court, and that court (3d Cow. Rep., 347), gave the construction to the law contended for by Mr. Foster, and then the Legislature changed the statute, to make it con-
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formable to that decision. It was difficult in those days, if not impos- sible, for a person to remain neutral in, or for one of ambition and ability to keep out of politics during the exciting times growing out of the discussion relative to the convention and constitution of 1821, the elective franchise, the presidential campaign between General Jackson and John Quincy Adams in 1824, and the still more exciting one of 1828. Mr. Foster, like Samuel Beardsley, Greene C. Bronson, Samuel A. Talcott, William H. Maynard, Henry R. Storrs, Joseph Kirkland, Ezekiel Bacon, Joshua A. Spencer, Timothy Jenkins, and other legal luminaries, drifted into politics, and at an early age all of the above took as active a part in caucuses and conventions as in the trial of causes at the Circuit. In 1826, in the gubernatorial contest between De Witt Clinton and William B. Rochester, Mr. Foster was nominated for Assembly on the Rochester ticket; but the Clintonians and Feder- alists were too strong in the county, and the Rochester Assembly ticket was defeated. In 1827 Mr. Foster made a bold push for the office of surrogate, then held by Mr. Hathaway. It was a hazardous attempt for a young man, not then twenty-seven years of age, to try for the displacement of one who had been in political life as long as Mr. Hath- away, and who knew so well all the ins and outs of politics ; and more- over, who had to back him his son-in-law, Mr. Samuel Beardsley, then an important factor in the politics of the county and State. Neverthe- less, the effort was made. In March, 1827, Mr. Foster was appointed Mr. Hathaway's successor, surrogate of Oneida county, by Governor De Witt Clinton, which office he held until 1831. In 1830 he was elected State senator over Nehemiah Huntington, an old lawyer of Madison county. Mr. Foster's majority in Oneida county was 1,400. Ephraim Hart, of Utica ran on the workingmen's party, and received one vote in Rome and 475 votes in the county.
Mr. Foster was trustee of Rome village in 1826, 1827 and 1828, and supervisor of the town in 1829 and 1830, and again in 1833 and 1834.
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In January, 1835, he was again appointed surrogate of Oneida county, to succeed Alanson Bennett, and held the position until he resigned in August, 1837, as he was then soon to commence his congressional labors at Washington. In 1836 he was elected to Congress over Joshua A. Spencer, although Israel Stoddard ran as the "bolters'" candidate, and carried off 1,200 votes. It was the year Martin Van Buren was elected president of the United States. In the Harrison campaign of 1840 ex-Governor Seymour and Ward Hunt were com- petitors for the nomination for the State Senate. As the senatorial convention was about equally divided between those two candidates they finally compromised on the nomination of Mr. Foster, who was elected over Chester Buck of Lewis county. While in the Senate dur- ing this term Mr. Foster introduced a resolution, and to him belongs the honor of procuring its passage through both Houses of the Legis- lature, favoring the modification of the franking privilege, and a reduc- tion of the rate of postage (the cost of sending a single letter through the mails then being from eighteen to twenty-five cents). That was the first Legislative action taken on that subject, and although it took the general government a long time to give heed to that request from the Empire State, yet it was eventually done, and Mr. Foster lived to see that reform, initiated by him and so much needed by the peo- ple, become the law of the land. Near the close of his term he re- signed, to accept the appointment of United States senator, to fill a vacancy.
In April, 1853, President Franklin Pierce appointed Mr. Foster to the office of United States district attorney for the northern district of New York. The appointment was entirely unsolicited and unex - pected ; the first knowledge or intimation Mr. Foster had of such in- tended appointment was from the newspapers. Ile felt compelled to decline the proffered honor, and Samuel B. Garvin, then of Utica, was subsequently appointed. In 1863 he was appointed judge of the Su -
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preme Court from this judicial district for a term of eight years. Such then is a synopsis of the political and judicial life of Judge Foster, in addition to as large and important a law business as any other law- yer in Central New York, viz .: Six and one-half years surrogate ; two years in Congress ; eight years in the State Senate ; and eight years on the bench of the Supreme Court-all of which positions he adorned and discharged their various duties with an ability, fidelity and faithful- that were never questioned.
Bloomfield J. Beach was born in Taberg June 27, 1820, and was educated in Oliver C. Grosvenor's school in Rome, in Hamilton College and graduated from Princeton College in 1838. In 1840 he began the study of law with Calvin B. Gay in Rome and in 1843 was admitted to the bar and become a partner with Mr. Gay. In 1846 the firm of Stryker, Comstock & Beach was formed, and after that Mr. Beach had as partners A. H. Bailey and D. E. Wager, the latter connection be- ginning in 1874. Mr. Beach seldom appeared in court, but was eminent as counsel and in office work. During his life he was member of assembly, secretary and treasurer of the Rome Savings Bank forty- three years, president of Rome village, trustee of the Rome Water Works, director of Fort Stanwix Bank and of the First National Bank, and held many other positions of trust. Mr. Beach died in March, 1894.
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