A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, Part 106

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 904

USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut > Part 106

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While in college and university Mr. Stock- well played football and baseball and was active in all college sports, and has retained his love of the out-of-door life ever since. He is a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and in politics is a democrat. Ho has membership in the Cleveland Bar Asso- eiation and the Nisi Prius Club. He also belongs to the Chamber of Commerce Club, the University Club, the Mayfield Country Club and the Civie League.

On January 2, 1902, he married Miss Cor- delia A. Ranney, a granddaughter of the late Rufus P. Ranney, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, elsewhere mentioned in this publieation. Mrs. Stockwell was born and educated in Cleveland, attending Miss Mittleberger's private sehool, and was grad- uated from Vassar College. She is a musi-

eian of thorough training and wide expe- rienee, and pursued her higher studies in that art abroad in Germany. Mr. and Mrs. Stockwell have three daughters, all born in Cleveland, Alice Kean, Katharine Ranney and Jane Warner.

RUFUS P. RANNEY was one of the greatest lawyers and jurists of Ohio. His eontem- poraries revered him for his charming per- sonality, his profound legal wisdom, the pu- rity of his publie and private life, and for the quiet dignity of an ideal follower of his calling. He was for many years in active practice in Cleveland, and died at his home in that eity December 6, 1891, at the age ( seventy-eight.

It has often been asserted that the memory of a lawyer is evanescent. Even great jurists are forgotten; oftentimes great work. That Judge Ranney's work and influence remain vital to the present time is doubtless due to the fact that he was less legalistie than many of his contemporaries of the bench and bar, and because he brought to publie problems a breadth of human understanding and a knowledge of the forces that actuate social and economie affairs sufficient to give his opinions the breath of eternal life which time eannot wither nor age stale. Beyond adding this tribute to his catholicity of intellect and his intimate touch with modern conditions, it is now possible here to give a better esti- mate of his life and work than can be found in the writings and memorials previously published by such friends and admirers as Allen G. Thurman, Richard .A. Harrison, Jaeob D. Cox, Francis E. Hutehins and Sam- nel E. Williamson. The following para- graphs are therefore largely a brief abstraet sufficient to indicate Judge Ranney's position and eminence as a Cleveland lawyer and an Ohio jurist.

He was born at Blandford, Hampden County, Massachusetts, October 30, 1813. His father was a farmer of Seoteh deseent. The family moved to Portage County, Ohio, in 1822. The hard struggles of pioneer life were favorable to the full development of Rufus P. Ranney's great natural endowment, his inherited characteristies and the attain- ment of the highest excellence. Public in- struction was limited, but the stoek of intel- ligenee in the family, with a few standard books brought from Massachusetts, coupled with an active, penetrating and broad intel- leet, aroused in the son a desire to get an

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education. By manual labor and by teach- ing he was able when near manhood to enter an academy, and later he was a student in Western Reserve College, but was unable to finish the course on account of lack of means.

At the age of twenty-one he entered the law office of Joshua R. Giddings and Benja- min F. Wade, and was admitted to the bar in 1836. He formed a partnership with Mr. Wade when Giddings was elected to Con- gress and this firm became the leading one in Northeastern Ohio. Soon after Mr. Wade's election to the bench in 1845 Mr. Ranney re- moved to Warren, Trumbull County. He was minority party candidate for Congress in 1846 and 1848. In 1850 he was elected a delegate to the convention called to revise and amend the constitution of the state. Al- though a young man he was soon recognized as one of the leading members of the con- vention. In this party of distinguished law- yers, jurists and statesmen, there were few members who had so thorough a knowledge of political science, constitutional law, political and judicial history and the principle of jurisprudence as Judge Ranney displayed in the debates of the convention. He was made a member of the committee on the judicial department and chairman of the committee on revision, enrollment and ar- rangement. His work in the convention was ably reviewed in a memorial by Judge Wil- liamson for the State Bar Association in 1892 and without quoting at length from that doc- ument the following sentences should be noted as especially significant: "His part in the convention was largely the result of his in- tense belief in democracy; not democracy in a partisan sense, although that belief deter- mined his party fealty also, but democracy in the first and best sense as meaning gov- ernment by the people. He trusted people thoroughly, and although the character of the voting population of the state gradually changed before his death, his faith in the people continued to be so strong that he looked forward to the outcome of every struggle, in which both sides had a fair hearing, as sure to be wise and right. With- out this key to his votes and speeches they would be' sadly misunderstood. He favored every proposition to the limit of the executive and the legislative except as the duty of legislative action to restrain encroachment upon the rights of citizens could be imposed upon the General Assembly. His faith in the people led him to wish for them a larger

share in the administration of justice and to desire that every court should be to some ex- tent a court of first instance, and he would have had every question of facts, in equity as well as at law, referred to a jury. It was Judge Ranney who first proposed that the creditors of corporations should be secured by the individual liability of stock- holders, although the form and extent of the proposition were somewhat changed by amendment before its adoption." It is said that the amended constitution of 1850 con- formed very nearly to the principles and provisions advocated by Judge Ranney.

In March, 1851, he was elected by the General Assembly judge of the Supreme Court to succeed Judge Avery; and at the first election held under the amended con- stitution in 1851 he was chosen to be one of the judges of the new Supreme Court. He was assigned the longest term and served until 1856, when he resigned and removed from Warren to Cleveland, where he resumed the practice of law as member of the firm Ranney, Backus & Noble. In 1859 he was the unsuccessful candidate of his party against William Dennison for governor of the state. Three years afterwards he was nominated against his express desire, as a candidate for supreme judge. One of his partners, Franklin Backus, was nominated by the opposing party of the same office. To his own surprise, Judge Ranney was elected. After another two years on the bench he resumed the practice of law in Cleveland. The demands upon his professional services were now more than he could comply with. Anything like a selfish regard for his own pecuniary interests would have induced him to select for his attention the most important lucrative business that was offered, but the needs of a man or woman in difficulty or dis- tress were more likely to secure his devoted services than the offer of a large fee. When the Ohio State Bar Association was organ- ized in the year 1881 he was unanimously elected its president.

Every well informed Ohio lawyer is famil- iar with the opinions written by Judge Ranney while a justice of the Supreme Court. All these are found in the state reports, and a review of many of them is con- tained in the article by Judge William- son already mentioned. It is merely for the sake of illustrating his clarity of mind and his modern viewpoint that one brief quota- tion is made from a decision handed down

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by him half a century ago, in the case of Railroad Company vs. Keary (3 O. S., 201). The matter involved is a very familiar one at the present time, that of employer's liability. The rule and principle enunciated by Judge Ranney with the unanimous con- currence of the other members of the court, was as follows: "No one has the right to put in operation forces calculated to injure life and property without placing them under the control of a competent and ever-acting super- intending intelligence. Whether he under- takes it or procures another to represent him, the obligation remains the same, and a fail- ure to comply with it in either case imposes the duty of making reparation for any in- jury that may ensue."

Towards the close of his life Judge Ranney gradually withdrew from the practice of his profession; but the urgent solicitation of some old friend or an attack upon some im- portant constitutional or legal principle drew him occasionally from his library to the court room. The announcement that he was to make an argument never failed to bring together an audience of lawyers, eager to learn from him the art of forensic reasoning, of which he was a consummate and acknowl- edged master, to be entertained and in- structed by his sympathy and familiarity with the more recent advances in the science of jurisprudence. The well earned leisure of his later years was far from being in- dolent. If he had needed an inducement to continue his reading and study, he would have found it in the pleasure it gave him to share with others the results of such study. lle was anxious that young men should have the educational advantages which had been denied him, and it was for the double pur- pose of helping to provide such advantages and justifying the confidence which had been reposed in him by a valued client and friend, that he devoted much time for several years in placing the Case School of Applied Science at Cleveland upon a firm foundation and providing for it adequate buildings and equipment. From the time of Judge Ran- ney's admission to the bar he found time by means of his ability to dispose of business rapidly and by unremitting industry to make up to some extent the deficiency in his early education. Accident and taste combined to direct his attention particularly to the lan- guage of France and as soon as he could read it easily he made a profound study of her literature, politics, history and law. The

Civil Law and the debates which resulted in the Code Napoleon became as familiar to him as the Commentaries of Blackstone and had their part in forming his clear and mature conceptions of natural justice and views of public policy.

Judge Ranney was a man of great sim- plicity of character, wholly free from affec- tation and assumption. lle was a man of native modesty of character. Ile could have attained the highest standing in any pursuit or station requiring the exercise of intellec- tual and moral qualities, but his ambition was chastened and moderate and he seemed to have no aspirations for official place or popu- lar applause. While always dignified, he was a genial and companionable man, of fine wit and rare humor. He had singular · powers of memory. Every fact, every rule, every principle, when once acquired, remained with him always. He combined extensive and varied general knowledge with remarkable accuracy of judgment. His originality of mind was not impaired by his accumulation of knowledge and the ideas of others. No man was more fearless in asserting the right and in the performance of what he deemed his duty. His known integrity and honesty and his never failing common sense and sa- gacity in affairs of business placed in his hands weighty and responsible trusts embrac- ing important interests and large amounts of property. From the beginning of his career as a lawyer, by reason of the profes- sional learning, the clear and persuasive method of reasoning, the nice power of dis- crimination, the strict sense of justice, the inflexible integrity and the great practical wisdom which characterized and adorned all his efforts, he occupied the position of a lead- ing representative of the Ohio bar.

While on the bench Judge Ranney was one of the strongest administrative forces of the state government. He held a place of his own. He was a personal force whose power was profoundly felt in the administration of justice throughout the state. He made a deep and permanent impression on the juris- prudence of Ohio. His reported judicial opinions, all of which are characterized by inherent strength and breadth and dispassion- ate and unbiased judgment, show he had great facility in clear, concise, forcible ex- pression. No one could say a plain thing in a plainer way or deal with an abstruse sub- ject in a clearer manner. In oral argument or public discourse he gave a sort of colloquial

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familiarity to his utterances. No one could of whom Ohio is and always will be most justly proud. He is a star in her firmament that will never be blotted out." use an apter expression or an amusing anec- dote to greater effect. He never declaimed. He was as wise in what he left unsaid as in what he said. There was never anything JOHN A. KING is a Cleveland business man of wide and varied experience, and for several years has been successfully established as a real estate man with headquarters at 10807 St. Clair Avenue, where a large clientage and his many friends avail themselves of his judgment and ability in all branches of real estate. puerile or irrelevant in his arguments. They were characterized by a vigor and grasp of mind, a full possession of the subject and a fertility of resource whenever an emergency arose requiring him to bring to his aid his reserve power. Upon occasion no one conld use sarcasm with greater effect. But the blade he used was the sword of the soldier, not the dagger of the assassin. Judge Ranney had those qualities of simplicity, directness, can- dor, solidity, strength and sovereign good sense which the independence and reflective life of the early settlers of the western country fostered. At the bar or in his own . in 1851. The family located at North Am- library he was one of the most interesting of men. Ile never sought to appear learned, but rather to adopt his argument to the com- prehension of the weakest member of the profession and of a layman. His personal tastes were simple and domestic. His home life in its affections, confidence and constancy exhibited the gentler traits of his strong char- acter. His attachments to wife and children were of the tenderest and most enduring quality. He married Adeline W. Warner, who survived him for many years. Her father, Judge Jonathan Warner, was one of the pio- neers of the state and an associate judge of the Common Pleas Court from Ashtabula County. Judge and Mrs. Ranney had six children, four sous and two daughters, all now deceased. One of his granddaughters is living at Cleveland. Mrs. John N. Stockwell, Jr.

In conclusion may be quoted the words of Judge Allen G. Thurman: "For forty years I have been a devoted friend of Rufus P. Ranney and I firmly believe that he has been mine. It may therefore be permitted to me to say that of all the great lawyers I have ever known no one ever seemed to me to be his equal. With a quickness of apprehension almost supernatural, with a power of analysis that Pascal might have envied, with an in- tegrity that never for a moment was or could be brought into doubt, with a courage that never permitted him to fear to do what he believed to be right, with an industry that brought all his great qualities to successful operation, and with a mind cultivated beyond the sphere of his profession, he is, in the eyes of those who know him as I know him, a man

He was born in Vermilion, Ohio, June 19, 1869. The King family had lived in Northern Ohio for upwards of seventy years. His father, John M. King, was born in March, 1837, at Elba, Hesse, Germany, and was brought by his mother to the United States herst, Ohio, where John M. King grew up and became a sailor on the Great Lakes. That was his occupation until he was twenty-eight years old. After that he was in the grocery business at Vermilion, Ohio, and in 1886 re- moved to Cleveland and engaged in the re- tail liquor trade, from which he retired in 1893. He died at Cleveland in December, 1896. He was a democratic voter, a member of the Masonic Order and of the German Re- formed Church. John M. King married Anna Catherine Lingelbach. She was born at Hershfeldt, Hesse, Germany, in February, 1846, and is still living at Cleveland. Her father, Christian Lingelbach, was also a Hes- sian by birth, and came to this country in 1852, locating on a farm at Vermilion, Ohio. He died there in 1906 at the advanced age of ninety-one. John M. King and wife had three children : George, who is a railway passenger conductor and lives at North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin ; John A .; and Anna E., who lives with her mother and is unmarried.

John A. King was educated in the public schools of Vermilion, Ohio, finishing the eighth grade, but at the age of fourteen went to work regularly for his father. He was associated with his father in business for a number of years and continued for three years after the death of his father. He sold out in 1899, and in 1901 entered the real estate business as manager of the sales de- partment for the Pumphirey Realty Company in the Society for Savings Building. He was there three years and then took it upon him- self to manage the sales of an allotment of forty lots at Collinwood. He handled this deal very successfully and then entered the

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real estate business for himself at 10807 St. Clair Avenue. He is a partner with E. W. Guinan. They do a general brokerage in real estate. Mr. King is also a stockholder in the Jennings Sanitary Milk Bottle Com- pany.

Ile is independent in politics and is un- married. His home is at 553 East 101st Street.

HOWARD L. WADSWORTH is an engineer who has specialized in foundry practice and the principal achievement of his early years has been establishing the American Foundry and Equipment Company of Cleveland, of which he is active manager.

He comes of a family of people talented and proficient in different lines of technical work. Mr. Wadsworth was born in Cleveland March 18, 1887. and is of English ancestry that was transplanted to New England in colonial days. IIis grandfather, Frederick B. Wads- worth, was born at Cleveland in 1831; repre- senting pioneer stock in the Western Reserve. He spent his life in Cleveland and died here in 1913. The greater part of his life he was a merchant. George H. Wadsworth, father of Howard, was born at Cleveland in 1853, and is still a resident of that city. His spe- cial line of service from early manhood has been railroading, and he is still in the har- ness as an employee of the Baltimore & Ohio system. Politically he is a republican. George H. Wadsworth married Aliee Roberts, who was born at Wisbeck, England, in 1858. They have a family of five children: Herbert A., living at Cleveland; Roland E., who is manager of the Wadsworth Typewriter Com- pany of Cleveland, a business established by Herbert A. Wadsworth in 1908; Howard L .; Edith A., who lives at home and is a pipe organist ; and Walter, who is assistant super- intendent of the American Foundry and Equipment Company of Cleveland.

Howard L. Wadsworth after graduating from the East High School of Cleveland in 1905, spent four years in Case School of Applied Science. His special work there was in mining and metallurgy. On leaving the technical school in 1909 he followed up foun- dry engineering work in Cleveland for several years, and in 1913 broadened his oppor- tunities and experience by five months of observation and practical work abroad. Dur- ing that time he was consulting engineer de- signing equipment for a large manufactur- ing plant in Germany and he also traveled

through that country, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, France and England, visiting and studying foundry practice in some of the biggest industrial centers of Europe.

Soon after his return to Ameriea Mr. Wads- worth established the American Foundry & Equipment Company. In 1916 the Sand Lifting Machine Company of New York and the Ameriean Foundry and Equipment Com- pany were consolidated under the latter title, with sales offices in New York City and fac- tory in Cleveland. The business is the manu- facture of a special line of sand mixing and sand blasting machinery, designed for in- ereased efficieney of plants using them as well as labor saving devices. The machines have an extensive use in foundries and other manufacturing plants and they have already been aecorded introduction to many of the plants of the United States and. have even been sold and installed in Europe.

Mr. Wadsworth is a member of the Cleve- land Engineering Society, the Society of Automobile Engineers, belongs to the Old Colony Club, the Cleveland Athletic Club, the Cleveland Automobile Club, and the Zeta Psi Greek letter fraternity. He is unmarried and resides in the Cleveland Athletic Club.

HARVEY RICE had most of those attributes and accomplishments which in all times have been associated with the character of the gentleman. He was a lawyer of rare ability, a keen business man, exemplified the vision and judgment of the statesman in the few years he spent in publie office, and with all his praetical interests he lived in close com- panionship with the deeper and finer things of life and the spiritual verities.

He was born at Conway, Massachusetts, June 11, 1800, and died at Cleveland Novem- ber 7, 1891. The name Rice is of Welsh origin. He was descended from Edmund Riee, who brought his family from Berkham- sted, Hertfordshire, England, to Massaehn- setts in 1638. Among the descendants of Ed- mund was Cyrus Riee, who was the first white man to settle at Conway in 1762. Stephen Rice, father of Harvey, married Luey Baker, who died August 2, 1804. when her son was four years old. Of his father Harvey Rice wrote : "My father was a man of fine physical proportions and of great physical strength. Though not highly educated he possessed a logical mind and rarely met his equal in debating a theological question. As the grand object of life he never sought wealth, nor did

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he obtain it. Yet he managed to live in com- fortable circumstances and always sustained an irreproachable character. He died in 1850, in the eighty-third year of his age."

Harvey Rice grew up surrounded by many of those influences which produced the most stalwart characters of old New England. He graduated from Williams College in 1824, and immediately set out for the Western Re- serve of Ohio, reaching Cleveland September 24, 1824. While employed as a classical teacher and principal in the Cleveland Acad- emy, he studied law in the office of Reuben Wood, afterward chief justice of the Su- preme Court and governor of Ohio. Later he studied law with Bellamy Storer at Cincin- nati. Harvey Rice and Miss Fannie Rice were married September 27, 1828, at the home of her brother-in-law, Governor Wood. She was a native of Sheldon, Vermont, and died in 1837. In 1840 Harvey Rice married Emma Maria Wood, and they enjoyed a companion- ship of nearly fifty years.

Harvey Rice was elected a member of the Legislature in 1830 and was appointed to the committee to effect the first revision of the state laws. Toward the close of the session he was appointed sales agent for a large body of school lands of the Western Reserve, but in 1833 returned to Cleveland and was ap- pointed clerk of the County Courts, holding that office seven years.

The most memorable distinction associated with the name of Harvey Rice is that he was "father of the common school system of Ohio." He was elected a member of the State Senate in 1851, and was chairman of the com- mittee on schools, and as such drafted, re- ported and secured the passage of the school bill which was the first law in Ohio to make the common schools really free and public schools, supported by taxation instead of voluntary subscription and open to the chil- dren of the poorest as well as the richest.

Harvey Rice lived a busy and productive life, though its record can not be told in terms of offices held or abnormal achieve- ment and experience. He was a member of innumerable boards and gave much of his time gratuitously to the administration and welfare of public institutions, was one of the early friends and stanchest supporters of the Western Reserve Historical Society, sug- gested the idea and was chairman of the com- mittee which erected the statue of Commo- dore Perry in Cleveland, and was president of the Early Settlers Association of Cuyahoga

County from 1879, the date of its organiza- tion, until his death. Through this associa- tion he brought about the erection of the statue of Moses Cleaveland and delivered the memorial historical address upon the unveil- ing of the monument in 1888. He was for many years one of the most influential alumni of Williams College and the dignified monu- ment in Mission Park near the college grounds was donated by him as a memorial to the movement which led to the organization of the American Board of Foreign Missions. As has been well said, Harvey Rice "enjoyed a serene, placid, domestic, social and literary life." He lived constantly among books and literary associations, and himself wielded a very facile pen, producing several volumes of history, biography, poems and essays. He is one of the best examples that can be recalled in Cleveland of a character that was as wise as it was useful, and was guided and inspired by high ideals as much as by practical pur- poses.

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A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, Part 106

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company Number of Pages: 904

Author: Avery, Elroy McKendree, 1844-1935; Lewis Publishing Company
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Chicago, New York The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 904