USA > New York > Orange County > The history of Orange County, New York > Part 48
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It is needless to say that such painstaking industry implies the most conscientious devotion on the part of Mr. Esmond to his client's cause -- a devotion as earnest and intense when the amount involved is small as when it is large. His theory is that a small case is just as important to a poor man as a large case is to a rich one and that the measure of duty, of fidelity and of devotion should be the same in each.
But mere industry is of little avail in the law unless directed by ability. It is a valuable supplement to ability, never a substitute for it. Mr. Es- mond has all the qualifications of an able trial lawyer. I once saw him in Kingston pitted against one of the leaders of the Ulster County bar overturn by the sheer force of his ability and address, all the prejudices first formed against his client, the defendant, in the mind of both court and jury, in a case in which the plaintiff, an old man, was seeking the restoration of property turned over by him to his son. I heard Judge Chester say that in the beginning of the trial he thought the plaintiff was right but that as the case proceeded his mind changed. This result was due solely to the splendid defense made by Mr. Esmond in a case which from the start was full of elements of danger and defeat.
Mr. Esmond has always taken a prominent part in the literary life of the community and in the discussion of public topics. His services to the Chautauqua society have been most valuable, while his own addresses upon a large variety of topics have been a distinct contribution to the literature of the subject.
It is fortunate indeed for Mr. Esmond at this time that he has all these resources to fall back upon ; else might he have been wholly crushed by
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the cruel sorrow that came to him and his devoted wife in the recent loss of their only child, Paul Warner Esmond, one of the most precocious, promising and brilliant boys who ever lived. His poems, dealing with the problems of life and death, are as mature, reflective and suggestive as though written by a man of fifty. That such a child of genius should be snatched away when the angel of death leaves untouched so many circles from which one could be better spared, is a mystery that has never ceased to perplex mankind.
Howard Thornton, of Newburgh, bel-esprit, bon-vivant and raconteur, the favorite of society and the delight of dinner tables, is not one whit less a good lawyer because be can smooth away the difficulties of a hostess in entertaining her guests as easily as he can glide over the difficulties of his client's case in court. The best lawyers have always shone in society, from Hamilton to Choate, and Mr. Thornton's social gifts have never interfered with his devotion to his profession. Every morning, year in and year out, the early riser can see Mr. Thornton at seven o'clock wend- ing his way to his office where by ten o'clock he has already accomplished a day's work and is ready to talk with his clients.
Mr. Thornton has always found his chief pleasure in some abstruse question arising out of the law of wills or of real estate. He has been drawn into some very important litigations involving the construction of the transfer tax law and his contentions have been uniformly sustained by the Court of Appeals.
Mr. Thornton's service in the Assembly, of which he was for three years a member, showed his capacity for public affairs. He was chairman of the judiciary committee and took high rank in legislation and politics. But his tastes incline him to the more arduous and less devious duties of his profession in which he has gained the reputation of an honorable, talented and brilliant lawyer.
Russel Headley, of Newburgh, is the son of the eminent historian Joel T. Headley from whom, doubtless, he inherits those literary gifts which account in part for the direction of his energies into the field of legal authorship. But this is not the only reason. It is but justice to him that it should be known that Mr. Headley was interrupted in the very midst of a brilliant career at the bar by the coming on of that most disqualifying of all infirmities for an advocate-deafness. This naturally had the effect of turning Mr. Headley to the labors of authorship for which his inherited
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tastes and acquired accomplishments so well fitted liim. His works upon assignments, witnesses and criminal justice are well known to and widely read by the profession.
Mr. Headley filled the position of district attorney of Orange County for two terms. He especially distinguished himself at this time by his abilities as a trial lawyer.
Mr. Headley accepted in 1902 and still holds a position in the legal divi- sion of the State Excise Department at Albany. His research, his faculty for writing sound, able, exhaustive opinions and his knowledge of the law of pleadings make him a most valuable member of the legal staff of that very important branch of the public service, in which questions are constantly arising which could scarcely be expected to come within the purview of an arm of the service devoted to the enforcement of a single law. In this work Mr. Headley is able to reconcile himself to the sur- render of those more spectacular triumphs of the court room in which his activities and his ambition once found a more congenial field.
Cornelius L. Waring, of Newburgh, is an authority in the law of mu- nicipal corporations. He was for many years the attorney for the city, the interests of which he always most zealously and successfully pro- tected. He has a large general practice including among his clients some wealthy business corporations.
Mr. Waring has had wide experience in the trial of cases. His man- ner in court is marked by dignity, determination and persistency. He never yields a point on his own side and he never fails to seize upon the weak point in the case of his adversary. His arguments are terse, direct and forceful, always commanding ready and respectful attention.
Elmer E. Roosa, of the Newburgh bar, who was associated with Judge Hirschberg at the time he ascended the bench, succeeded in large part to the prestige of an office which had been established for nearly thirty years. The confidence always reposed in him by Judge Hirschberg is shared by a large body of devoted clients who find in him a safe, dis- creet and honorable counselor.
Edward J. Collins, of Newburgh, who is associated in practice with Judge Seeger, possesses in a high degree that dignity of bearing and of character which well supports professional attainments of a superior order. He has been honored by his fellow citizens by repeated marks of their confidence. He was for some years president of the common
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council of the city of Newburgh, a position which brought into prom- inence his fine qualities of mind and character.
Henry R. Lydecker, of Newburgh, has the most amiable disposition of any lawyer at the bar. If he were more self-assertive his abilities would be more widely appreciated. He showed marked ability in his service four successive winters in the attorney general's office at Albany in the work of reviewing for constitutional and other objections, the bills sent by the Legislature to the Governor. This appointment was made each year and would not have been repeatedly conferred unless the dis- charge of his important duties had proved to be able and satisfactory.
Mr. Lydecker has recently received. at the instance of Presiding Jus- tice Hirschberg, an appointment upon the clerical force of the Appellate Division-another evidence of the high opinion entertained of him by governors. attorneys general and judges alike.
J. Renwick Thompson, Jr., of Newburgh, is still permitted to write "junior" to a noble and conspicuous senior, who now for more than fifty years has ministered over one of the most important churches and con- gregations in Newburgh. Mr. Thompson's character and standing wholly contradict the adage about "ministers' sons." In his keeping all the tradi- tions of an honorable lineage are safe, while a large and increasing client- age can testify that in his hands are equally safe all the interests com- mitted to him.
Elwood C. Smith, who has an office in Turner as well as in Newburgh. has advanced rapidly in reputation and standing. His agreeable manners and attractive personality always create a favorable impression sure to be confirmed by future acquaintance with his character and abilities. He enjoys the respect of the community and the confidence of a very consid- erable clientage.
N. Deyo Belknap. of Newburgh, has shown great talent in all his appearances in court and is a rising aspirant for professional honors. In an action brought by him for the construction of a will he exhibited all the qualities of a mature and experienced practitioner. His success at the bar has been immediate and pronounced.
R. H. Barnett, of Newburgh, has made a specialty of negligence actions. Like his great exemplar. John M. Gardner, he never concedes that he is beaten. He always renews the argument to the court, after he- ing nonsuited. so undauntedly that the court often reverses itself and
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lets the case go to the jury, before which Mr. Barnett meets with unvary- ing success. A jury always admires pluck and pertinacity and these quali- ties Mr. Barnett possesses in a marked degree.
Graham Witschief, of Newburgh, would attract attention in any assem- bly for the intellectual cast of his features, which clearly betoken unusual talent. This impression is at once confirmed when he addresses the court. He so excels in the power of lucid statement that by the time he has informed the court of the nature of the controversy he has already pro- duced the effect of an argument. This faculty of seizing upon the crucial, controlling points of the case, of applying the philosophical rather than the historical method, is one of the rarest among lawyers, who usually narrate the facts in the order in which they occurred, leaving the court to pick out the essential, determining elements from a mass of more or less related matter. This gift Mr. Witschief possesses to a degree so unusual that it constitutes a large factor in the success which he has so rapidly attained. He is a rising advocate, taking his place easily among the leaders of the Orange County bar.
Benjamin McClung, of Newburgh, obtained, early in his practice, a foremost position at the bar of the county. One of his first and most notable victories, which attracted wide attention at the time, was won in a proceeding instituted by him in 182 to require the registry board of the town of Highlands to strike from the register the names of over a hundred soldiers quartered at West Point, who claimed the right to vote in the village of Highland Falls, adjoining the Government reservation. Mr. McClung took the position that the West Point reservation is not a part of the territory of the State of New York ; that upon the cession of the territory by the State the general government became invested with exclusive jurisdiction over it and that persons resident within it are not entitled to vote. Mr. McClung, notwithstanding the limited time at his disposal, upon the very eve of an exciting election, made a most exhaus- tive and convincing argument, collating all the authorities and relying chiefly upon the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Fort Leavenworth Railroad Company vs. Lowe, which involved the character of Government property at Fort Leavenworth. Though he was opposed by such eminent counsel as Judge Hirschberg, Walter C. Anthony and Howard Thornton, his argument was sustained by the court and the law upon the subject was finally established in this State.
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His stubborn defense a few years ago of an unpopular client will be long remembered. So strong was the public sentiment against his client and so thoroughly had the court room been surcharged with this sentiment that it was impossible for Mr. McClung to prevent his client's conviction of the offense of receiving stolen property, knowing it to be stolen. But, nothing daunted, Mr. McChing procured a stay of the sentence, reversed the conviction on appeal, and on the second trial cleared his client trium- phantly, the court saying that the proof for the prosecution did not make the slightest progress toward fastening guilt upon the defendant. This case affords a striking illustration of the dangers that often surround innocent men in the artificially superheated atmosphere of a court room! created by an excited and credulous public opinion eager for a victim. Had it not been for Mr. McClung's steadfast, stalwart and fearless exer- tions in this case, in the face of much hostile criticism, an absolutely inno- cent man. as subsequently ascertained by the court, would have been con- signed to the ignominy of a term in State prison. Mr. McClung's action in thus stemming the tide of adverse, powerful and malignant influences bent upon crushing and ruining his client cannot be overestimated. It attests his place at the Orange County bar not merely for intellectual ability but for that moral courage which constitutes the very highest attribute, the noblest equipment of the advocate.
That Mr. McClung's manly, independent and intrepid character is understood and admired by the public was strikingly shown in the fall of 1907 by his election to the office of mayor of the city of Newburgh by a majority of over five hundred votes, overcoming an adverse majority of about five hundred usually cast in that city against the candidate of his party. The people evidently believed that Mr. McClung is imbued with the idea that a municipal corporation is, in its last analysis, simply a business corporation in which each taxpayer is a stockholder, the aldermen its directors and the mayor its business manager.
Mr. McClung has already shown that this confidence in his character and aims is well founded. He may be relied upon to give the people a purely business administration unfettered by political obligations and uninfluenced by the desire to build up a personal machine or to reward a band of hungry parasites.
Henry Kohl, of Newburgh, now the partner of Mr. McClung, is also a fighter. His tastes and his sympathies incline him to espouse the weaker
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cause, and he is often assigned by the court to defend those who are unable to employ counsel. I remember a notable case in which he was thus assigned arising out of the killing of a motorman by the alleged criminal negligence of another motorman in causing a collision. The indictment was for manslaughter and the trolley company refused to give any assistance to the accused motorman, who languished several months in the county jail while his case was being tossed back and forth between the supreme and county courts. Mr. Kohl took hold of the case and so stoutly convinced several jurors that the fault was that of the company in not providing the motorman with proper appliances that a disagreement was secured and the motorman discharged on his own recognizance. This illustrates the quality of Mr. Kohl's work-earnest, strong, enthusiastic, courageous, loyal. Nothing dismays him. The more able and astute his opponent, the better he is satisfied, since it proportionately increases his credit in beating him, as he always expects to do, and frequently does.
Mr. Kohl is a verdict getter. His recent success in getting a verdict for $9,000 in a negligence case was a gratifying one, while he also recently secured a favorable settlement in a case against the city growing out of the fall of a tree in a high wind, causing the death of a young lady. The lawyers who start in to try a case against Henry Kohl know that in him they will find an opponent equipped at every point and with every art to sway a jury and to save his client. He has forged his way ahead until now he is in the front rank of Orange County's trial lawyers.
J. Bradley Scott, of Newburgh, is the son of that noble lawyer, David A. Scott, whose precious legacy of an honorable name is guarded well by the son, who came to the bar several years after his father's death. He has developed far more fondness for the trial of cases than his father had and has already achieved a distinct standing as a trial lawyer. His recent success before the appellate courts, in the case involving the right of a soda water establishment to refuse to furnish soda water upon request to a colored person, has attracted great attention. The case involves grave questions and far-reaching consequences. Mr. Scott's broad. powerful and convincing argument in it shows that he inherits not only the good name but also the fine intellectual, discriminating qualities of his distin- guished father.
George H. Decker, of Middletown, is the dean of its trial lawyers. He is the one first asked upon every public occasion to voice its spirit. or its
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purpose, filling in this respect the part so often taken by Mr. Winfield, who was, by the way, until his death, always one of Mr. Decker's warm- est friends and admirers.
Possessed of a highly sensitive, responsive nature, a poetic, imaginative temperament, an exquisitely nervous organization, his fibre is almost too fine for the buffetings and shocks of the court room. While his brilliant mund, his legal attainments and his oratorical powers have always been exhibited in the court room to great advantage and with marked success, yet he has often declined conflicts in which, if he had entered upon them, net he, but his opponent, would have had occasion to regret it. Mi. Decker has always placed a far more modest estimate upon his own abilities than he should have done, and a far lower estimate than that of the public, by which he is unreservedly admired and respected.
Mr. Decker's gifts as a public speaker, his scholarly tastes and his literary attainments are never shown to greater advantage than upon the lecture platform, from which he has often instructed and delighted a cultured andience. His recent series of brilliant lectures upon Edgar Allan Poe will be long remembered.
Soon after Mr. Decker's admission to the bar in 1870 he formed a part- nership, under the name of McQuoid & Decker. with Henry M. McQuoid, who died a few years later. Mr. McQueid's portrait hangs in Mr. Decker's office, but there is little else to remind us now of one who once occupied a large place in the interest and attention of the public. Mr. McQuoid was distinguishd for bold, dashing, sparkling qualities as a trial lawyer. Soon after Judge Groo moved from Monticello to Middletown in 1866 he and Mr. McQuoid were opposed to each other in a trial in which Mr. McQuoid disputed all of Judge Groo's legal propositions with the prefatory remark, "That may be good law in Sullivan County but it won't go in Orange County." After Judge Groo had stood this as long as he thought he ought to. he remarked. "I want you to understand that there are just as good liwyers in Sullivan County as in Orange County." "Oh, yes," said MeQuoid, "I know that, but they all stay there."
Judge Groo himself enjoyed the sally and was himself very quick at a retort. Once upon a trial in Goshen in which he was opposed by Judge George W. Greene, who at one time occupied a prominent place at the Orange County bar, subsequently living in New York, where he died. Judge Greene asked the jurors the usual question, whether any of them
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had ever done any business with Judge Groo, saying that if so he would excuse them, whereupon Judge Groo said. "Are there any gentlemen in the box who have ever done any business with Judge Greene; if so I would like to have them remain."
Mr. McQuoid had a wonderful memory. He could entertain his friends by the hour repeating passages from famous orations or works of poetry. His memory treasured even a fugitive poem read once in a newspaper. I recall an instance of this. One day when I was driving back with him in a buggy from Circleville, where we had tried a case against each other (it was the local custom for the lawyers to drive out together for their jus- tice's court trials ) he repeated to me a poem he had seen in a newspaper written by Prime. the well known Eastern traveler, in memory of a young girl, Claude Brownrigg, who had died soon after he had told her of his travels in Palestine, as they walked the beach one night in the moon- light. I told Mr. McQuoid I would like a copy of it. So as soon as he got back to Middletown he wrote it off for me. I have preserved it these thirty years and more. Here are some of the lines :
"All this I wished as on the beach Beside the sea I walked, And to a young and white-robed girl, As thus I wished I talked. Talked of far travel, wanderings iong, And scenes in many lands, And all the while the golden path Led eastward from the sands.
"And she has crossed the shining path, The path where moonbeams quiver, And she is in Jerusalem, Forever, yes, forever.'
That lines like these should be repeated by him in coming back from a commonplace suit in justice's court shows how thirty-five years ago law- yers thought and talked of something besides law and politics, money and stock markets.
The name of the McQuoids should not be permitted to fade from the memory of the passing generation. His brother, Charles C. McQuoid, who died in 1866, attained even greater prominence at the bar. He en- joyed great personal popularity and his premature death at the age of thirty-six from typhoid fever, contracted at the home of a client, whose
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will he had been asked to draw, removed from the bar one of its most conspicuous figures. His popularity is shown by his success in defeating Judge Gedney for district attorney by a narrow majority in 1859. He served as district attorney until 1862, being succeeded by Abram S. Cas- sedy, who in 1865 was succeeded by J. Hallock Drake, another brilliant member of the Orange County har who practiced in Newburgh for some vears but who subsequently settled in New York.
Charles G. Dill, now the Nestor of the Middletown bar, studied lan with Charles C. McQuoid, whose memory he holds in deep veneration. Mr. Dill at one time enjoyed the largest practice in Middletown. It is only lately that he has relaxed his devotion to business, now spending several months each year in Florida, where he has extensive interests.
Mr. Dill is the very soul of honor and integrity in all the relations of life. The kindness of his heart is often obscured by the brusqueness of his manner which sometimes gives strangers a wholly erroneous impression of a disposition singularly generous, open and buoyant. He is the precise opposite of the type represented by the traditional cow that gives a good pail of milk and then kicks it over. Mr. Dill kicks over the pail first and then proceeds to fill it with the milk of human kindness. He generally explains at the beginning how impossible it is for him to do anything for you and ends by doing more for you than you asked or expected.
Mr Dill's miscellaneous library is the best in Orange County. He is a born, inveterate, irreclaimable bibliophile. . \ week that passes by without his buying some old, rare or scarce volume is to him a failure. The question of price is never considered. If he wants it he gets it and that is all there is of it. He has built several additions to his home to accommodate his treasures, but they constantly overtax its capacity. They overflow and regurgitate in a confusion that drives to despair the order fiend and the dust hunter.
Rosslyn M. Cox, who was for many years the partner of Mr. Dill and who recently has entered into partnership with Mr. Watts, is one of the most successful lawyers in Middletown. He is an expert in accountings before the surrogate and before the bankruptcy courts, but he is equally at home in a trial or in an argument before the court. The esteem in which he is held is shown by his nomination in 1906 for the office of county judge.
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Associated with Mr. Cox is Elmer N. Oakes, whose abilities in the preparation of a case for trial are unique and remarkable. He is a natural mechanician, understanding with ease the most difficult adjust- ments, functions and forms of complicated machinery. The knowledge displayed by him in respect to the construction and operation of a loco- motive boiler was an important element in the success of several actions growing out of an explosion.
After preparing the case for trial Mr. Oakes is entirely competent to try it. He has often examined and cross examined the witnesses but distrusts his own powers when it comes to summing up the case to the inry. When his modesty shall be replaced by greater assurance he will be better known for his really solid attainments and fine abilities.
Abram F. Servin will probably never overcome his timidity at the sound of his own voice in the presence of a jury, though he can furnish enough law to other lawyers to keep them busy expounding it to the courts. He has argued and won cases in the Court of Appeals but his chief victories are carried off by other lawyers who argue from the learned and exhaustive briefs prepared by him. He is an expert in the preparation of a brief for the appellate courts. He can take the printed record of a case of which he never heard and construct from it a per- fectly convincing brief upon either side.
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