USA > Ohio > Bench and bar of Ohio; a compendium of history and biography, Vol. I > Part 10
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Judge Gholson was immediately succeeded by another famous lawyer, George Hoadly, who, after serving out his term of office in 1864, returned to the Bar and achieved great success. He appeared as one of the counsel for Samuel J. Tilden before the Electoral Commission created by Act of Congress to determine the contested presidential election of 1876. Judge Hoadly was afterwards elected governor of Ohio, and some years later removed to New York City, where he is now one of the leaders of the Bar.
In 1864 Alphonso Taft was chosen by the people to succeed Judge Hoadly on the Bench of the Superior Court, and he too brought to the discharge of his duties qualities of the highest order. He seemed to have been formed by nature to fill a judicial position. Of broad, clear comprehension, deeply learned, painstaking and accurate, kindly and charitable, deliberate in speech and action, yet as firm as his native granite hills, he seemed to lack no quality necessary to the discharge of his duties in the most successful manner, and his career on the Bench justified this opinion. He served for about nine years in such a manner as to elicit only good words from the Bar and the public, and resigned January 1, 1872, at the same time as Judge Storer.
J. Bryant Walker, son of a distinguished father and a junior member of the Bar, of great promise. whose early death has been much lamented, was appointed to fill the vacancy occasioned by Judge Taft's resignation, and held the place until the ensuing election, when Alfred Yaple was chosen by the peo- ple to the position.
Judge Yaple was a native of Ross county, Ohio, whence he came to Cin- cinnati at the close of the civil war to practice his profession. A great reader, with an excellent memory, he is said to have been a walking encyclopedia of legal knowledge; but he was more than that ; he was a good lawyer, having his learning so arranged and digested in his mind that he was able to apply it to a given case with great promptness. He always had about him certain obvious marks of his rural origin, yet he had the profound respect of the community, which was shown in a striking manner in the year 1874, when he was re-elected without opposition. The Republican party, to which he was opposed, paid him the compliment of declining to nominate a candidate against him. At the end of his term in 1879 he returned to the Bar, where he continued in practice until his death in the year 1893.
The regular election in 1879 designated as the successor of Judge Yaple a rising young man who has since acquired a national reputation. Joseph B. Foraker took his seat upon the Bench in that year and began the performance of his duties with characteristic energy. A graduate of Cornell, with a good deal of varied experience acquired during his practice at the Bar, he brought
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to the Bench a strong sense of right, quick and clear perceptions, and strong reasoning powers. While in good health his service was very satisfactory to the Bar; but the confinement of judicial life soon began to wear upon him and his health failed, so that he resigned his position in 1882 and returned to the more active life at the Bar, where he was speedily restored to health and strength. He has since served two terms as governor of Ohio and is now a member of the Senate of the United States, where he has fairly earned the applause of his party and the respect of his opponents.
The vacancy caused by Judge Foraker's resignation was filled by the appointment of William Worthington, who served very acceptably until the ensuing election.
Hiram D. Peck was chosen in 1883 for the residue of Judge Foraker's term, and took his seat upon the Bench. He was re-elected in 1884 and served out his term, ending in 1889, when, declining a renomination, he returned to the practice, and was succeeded by Governor Edward F. Noyes, who served until the following summer, when he suddenly died and John Riner Sayler was appointed to fill the vacancy until the next election (1891), when the pres- ent incumbent, Judge Rufus B. Smith, was chosen by the people. Judge Smith was re-elected in the year 1894, and continues to discharge the duties of the office to the great satisfaction of the profession.
The second vacancy on the Bench of the Superior Court was caused by the death of Judge Spencer in the year 1861, and it was filled by no less a personage than Stanley Matthews, of whom it is said that he was elected while serving in the army as a colonel of Ohio volunteers, and that he returned home to take his seat on the Bench. The short period which he served as a judge of the Superior Court was sufficient to indicate the high class of judicial work of which he was capable and his early resignation was a matter of gen- eral regret. Judge Matthews was afterwards elected to the Senate of the United States and subsequently appointed a justice of the Supreme Court. His distinguished services in both positions are matters of national history.
Charles Fox, a practitioner of many years' experience and much respected, succeeded Judge Matthews and served out one term, which expired in 1869. He afterwards returned to the Bar, and lived to be its senior member.
Judge M. B. Hagans was in 1869 elected to the position vacated by Judge Fox, and served until 1873, when he resigned to return to practice, from which he retired some years since.
The successor of Judge Hagans was Myron H. Tilden, celebrated for pro- found learning and for many years a professor in the Cincinnati Law School. He was especially noted for his knowledge of equity jurisprudence and procedure. He served until the year 1878, when he retired in broken health.
Judson Harmon, then in the flush of young manhood, succeeded to the office and continued on the Bench, rendering valuable service, until 1887, when he resigned to become the head of the firm which had theretofore been led by Judge Hoadly, who removed to New York. Judge Harmon was as success-
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ful at the Bar as on the Bench, and was appointed attorney-general of the United States by President Cleveland during his second term.
William H. Taft was the successor of Judge Harmon on the Bench of the Superior Court, and continued thereon until the year 1890, when he resigned to accept the position of solicitor general of the United States, from which he was further promoted to that of judge of the United States Circuit Court for the Sixth Circuit, which he continues to fill to the great satisfaction of the Bar and people of the circuit.
The vacancy caused by the resignation of Judge Taft was filled by the election of Samuel F. Hunt. whose popularity was further attested by his re-election in 1893 to the Bench of which he is one of the present incumbents.
The last of the three original judges of the Superior Court to leave the Bench was Judge Storer, who resigned January 1, 1872, after a continuous service of nearly eighteen years.
John L. Miner, an old and well known member of the Bar, and a former partner in practice with Judge Gholson, was appointed to and filled the vacancy until the next election, when Timothy A. O'Connor was elected by the people and took his seat upon the Bench, where he remained until 1877, the expiration of his term. During a large part of his term of office Judge O'Connor was troubled by ill health.
Manning F. Force succeeded Judge O'Connor. He brought to the Bench a capacity, training and experience rarely combined in one person. A grad- uate of Harvard, he came to Cincinnati soon after leaving college and began the practice of law. At the outbreak of the civil war he entered the army and rapidly rose in rank until he attained that of major general. He participated in the Vicksburg and Atlanta campaigns and led his division on Sherman's march to the sea, besides seeing a good deal of other hard service. He was severely wounded at Atlanta, but returned to the army as soon as he recovered, and remained with it until the close of the war. Soon after his return home he was elected a judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton county, and continued on the Bench of that Court for a period of ten years. After a brief interval Judge Force was elected to the Superior Court, where he remained for two terms. He received the compliment of a unanimous re-election in 1882, the Democratic party declining to nominate a candidate against him. To the regret of the entire profession, Judge Force left the Bench in 1887 because of failing health. A few months at the Bar served to restore him to good condition, but he was not permitted to remain long in practice. At the earnest request of the board of trustees, of Governor Foraker, and many friends, he accepted the position of commandant of the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Home, to which he was appointed in the year 188S and where he has since been, rendering that careful, conscientious service for which he is noted.
Frederick W. Moore was elected to take the place vacated by Judge Force in 1887. He, too, had been a distinguished officer in the army during the civil war, rising to the position of colonel of the Eighty-first Ohio volunteers, and after the war was appointed to a position in the regular army, which he
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subsequently resigned to return to the Bar. Prior to his election to the Superior Court he had served two terms as judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He was re-elected to the Superior Court in 1892, and retired at the end of his term in May of the present year, 1897, to be succeeded by William H. Jackson, son of the late Justice Jackson, of Tennessee, who comes to the Bench with a good training and from whom valuable service is expected.
JUDGES OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OF CINCINNATI FROM ITS ORGANIZATION TO THE PRESENT TIME.
William Y. Gholson, 1854-1859; George Hoadly, 1859-1864 ; Alphonso Taft, 1864-1872; J. Bryant Walker, 1872; Alfred Yaple, 1872-1879; Joseph B. Foraker, 1879-1882; William Worthington, 1882-1883 ; Hiram D. Peck, 1883-1889 ; Edward F. Noyes, 1889-1890; John Riner Sayler, 1890-1891 ; Rufus B. Smith, 1891 -.
Oliver M. Spencer, 1854-1861; Charles D. Coffin, 1861-1862; Stanley Matthews, 1862-1863; Charles Fox, 1863-1868 ; Marcellus B. Hagans, 1868- 1873 ; Myron H. Tilden, 1873-1878; Judson Harmon, 1878-1887; William H. Taft, 1887-1890 ; Samuel F. Hunt, 1890 -.
Bellamy Storer, 1854-1872 ; John L. Miner, 1872 ; Timothy A. O'Connor, 1872-1879 ; Manning F. Force, 1877-1887; Frederick W. Moore, 1887-1897 ; William H. Jackson, 1897 -
As further showing the class of men who have occupied seats on the Bench of the Superior Court, it may be mentioned that the following positions have been filled by the judges named: 1 Justice U. S. Supreme Court-Matthews; 1 Major General U. S. Volunteers-Force; 1 Judge Supreme Court of Ohio- Gholson ; 3 Governors of Ohio-Hoadly, Foraker and Noves ; 2 U. S. Senators -Matthews and Foraker ; 2 U. S. Attorney-Generals-A. Taft and Harmon ; 1 Minister to Russia-Alphonso Taft; 1 Minister to France-Noyes ; 1 U. S. Circuit Judge-W. H. Taft.
In addition to all of which several of the more recent incumbents claim to be still classified as young men, and to live in hopes.
It may not be uninteresting to note that seventeen of the twenty-six judges who have occupied positions on the Bench of the Superior Court were men of collegiate education. Those from Harvard were Walker, Worthington, Force and Jackson ; from Yale, A. Taft, W. H. Taft and Smith ; from Princeton, Gholson ; from Miami, Sayler, Hunt and Peck ; from Bowdoin, Storer ; from Kenyon, Matthews; from Dennison, Harmon ; from Darmouth, Noyes ; from Western Reserve, Hoadly ; and from Cornell, Foraker. HIRAM D. PECK.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
THOMAS EWING (1789-1871). Thomas Ewing, commonly known as " The Elder," was born near West Liberty, Ohio county, Virginia, now in West Vir- ginia, on December 28, 1789. His Ewing ancestors were Scotch-Irish. His great-grandfather, Thomas Ewing. emigrated from Londonderry and settled in Greenwich, New Jersey, in 1718. Mr. Ewing's parents were George Ewing and Rachel Harris. His father enlisted in the Second Jersey regiment in 1775, and served throughout the Revolutionary War, gaining a first-lieutenancy. He left an interesting journal, which includes an account of the winter spent by the army at Valley Forge. After the war he removed to Western Pennsyl- vania, and later to West Liberty, where he taught a school. In April, 1792, he settled with his family at Marietta, Ohio. In an autobiographical sketch, from which is taken much of what is here told, Mr. Ewing speaks of his father as of good English education, fine literary taste, and considerable reading for the time and country in which he lived ; and of his mother as a woman of good intellect, but of slender education. She was possessed of great energy and strength of character, as is shown in the following extract from the address delivered at the Marietta centennial celebration by Mr. Ewing's son, General Thomas Ewing. "I have a letter from a kinswoman," said he, "in Westfield, New Jersey, telling me of a trip made to Cumberland county, in that State, in the year 1790, by a woman from the border of the Northwest Territory, who came there after a long absence on a last visit to hier aged father and mother. She was the wife of a soldier of the Revolution, who emi- grated to the far West after the war ended. She had made the journey from the Ohio over river and mountain, by flood and fell, through an almost track- less wilderness, on horseback, unattended, carrying a boy baby in her arms. No man ever boasted of his lineage with loftier pride than I, when I say that that brave and loving woman was my grandmother and the baby my father." Later the family removed with a few other families up the Muskingum river to the mouth of Olive Green creek, where they erected block houses and cab- ins. They had little but the bare necessaries of life. The autobiography says : "Salt was for a long time an unknown article. A party of soldiers once left us a very small quantity, and I remember the exquisite relish which it gave to our food." As a child Mr. Ewing saw a good deal of the Indians. Before the peace of 1795, the settlers were constantly threatened with raids. One of the neighbors was killed and scalped in the summer of 1794, and Mr. Ewing re-
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membered seeing the body borne into camp. It realized the imagination with which children were frightened of " raw head and bloody bones." An inci- dent of Mr. Ewing's early boyhood was preserved by a sister. The two, while playing in the woods, were chased by a bear. He told her to run home and waited until she got a considerable start before following. Though the bear nearly caught up with them, he maintained the distance which he had set be- tween himself and her. They reached home in safety after a terrifying chase; and their brother George killed the bear. Before Mr. Ewing was six years old his eldest sister taught him to read. He has noted an interesting mental phenomenon, viz., that in after life he remembered verbatim passages which, as a child, he had read without understanding, while he remembered as a rule only the sub- stance of passages that he had understood. His stock of books comprised lit- tle besides the Bible, and Watts's " Psalms and Hymns." Before he was eight years old he had read the entire Bible. He understood the four gospels to be accounts of four different advents, lives and crucifixions of the Savior, and was much disappointed when his father explained away this crowning miracle. In 1797 he was taken to the home of his aunt, Sarah Ewing Morgan, at West Liberty, where he went to school for seven months. There has been preserved one funny little incident illustrating his enthusiasm as a student. The reader which he studied had, near the end, the quotation from Proverbs, "The wicked flee when no man pursueth ; but the righteous are bold as a lion." He had kept his eye on this quotation as he struggled eagerly through the book. One day he ran home from school and in great excitement cried out to his aston- ished aunt, " Oh, aunty, I've got to the wicked flee!" After this visit he returned to his father's home, which was now in Athens county, Ohio, seven- teen miles beyond the frontier settlement, where he remained for several years. He soon became, next to his father, the scholar of the family, reading much aloud to his mother and sisters ; and listening to recitations by his mother, of poetry selected with great good taste, with which her memory was stored. There were some odes of Anacreon, which had been wafted to that strange and distant land. There were songs and ballads of love, misfortune, cruelty and falsehood, history and patriotism. These simple family recitals in the lit- tle cabin. before a bright hickory bark fire, gave a delight which nothing in his maturer years surpassed. As he appreciatively says, " while we gain much, there is something we lose by universal learning and abundant literature." He read everything he could lay hands on ; Æsop's Fables, The Vicar of Wake- field, newspapers, bringing to his knowledge facts about his own country which his father explained, facts of medicine, and science, questions of philosophy, disconnected, but suggestive. There was a good geography which he studied for its maps aud its fragments of universal history. He walked twenty miles from home, on a trail where, for thirteen miles, there was no house, to borrow from a kindly doctor a translation of Virgil's Æneid. This at odd hours he read aloud to the hired men-rough frontiersmen. "At that point of the nar- rative," he says, " where Æneas discloses to Dido his purpose of leaving her, and tells her of the vision of Mercury bearing the mandate of Jove, one of the
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men sprang to his feet, and declared that he did not believe a word of it,- Æneas had got tired of her and it was all a made-up story as an excuse to get off : and it was a d-d shame after all she had done for him. So the reputation of Æneas suffered by that day's reading." During the next few years he profited much by the instruction of several cultivated gentlemen who had fled to the frontier to escape temptation to intemperance. The famous " Coon-skin Library " was bought by general subscription about the year 1802, he contributing ten raccoon skins, all his hoarded wealth ; it contained some seventy tolerably well-selected books, which supplied him with intel- lectual food for a few years. Goldsmith's plays and Ossian he particularly mentions, and also notes the absence of Shakespeare's works, which he never saw until he was twenty. But he soon outgrew his opportunities, and between fourteen and twenty made little intellectual progress. He grew to be large and powerful in physique. Much of the time from 1809 to 1812 was spent at the Kanawha salt wells, where, by prodigious exertions, he earned enough money to cancel his father's purchase-mortgage and to pay for his own collegiate education, which he began at Ohio University, at Athens, during this time. To the regular course he added French, omitting Greek, and was graduated in 1815, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts, he and one class-mate being the first to receive a degree from a college in the Northwest Territory. He then entered the law office of the Honorable Philemon Beecher, of Lancaster, and in 1816 was admitted to the Bar. He was, during four or five years, prose- cuting attorney of Fairfield county, and succeeded in stamping out the traffic in counterfeit bank-notes theretofore prevalent. His business and reputation grew apace. He settled his father comfortably on a farm near Cannelton, Indiana, where he died in 1824, having lived to see, as he quaintly said, his son fast becoming "one of the great law characters " of Ohio. On January 7, 1820, Mr. Ewing was married to Miss Maria Wills Boyle, daughter of Hugh Boyle, of Lancaster, a young woman of great beauty and charm. She was a devout Catholic. Their married life was one of happiness unbroken until her death, which occurred on February 20, 1864, in Lancaster, where the memory of her virtues and charities has never been forgotten. Perhaps to no one, excepting Mr. Beecher, did Mr. Ewing owe so much as to Judge Charles Robert Sherman, who had a commanding practice, and, though recognizing in Mr. Ewing a formidable and growing rival, never failed when opportunity offered to advance Mr. Ewing's reputation by countenance and commenda- tion. This generosity was repaid, when, after Judge Sherman's untimely death in 1829, Mr. Ewing took into his family, and ultimately sent to West Point, Judge Sherman's great son, William Tecumseh Sherman. Of the Bar at that time Mr. Ewing says:
" A more delightful profession, or a kindlier set of men filling it, is hardly to be found than the Central Ohio Bar during the first ten or twelve years that I was a member. There was personal adventure enough, and physical and mental exercise enough, and more universal social fecling than generally belongs to societies of men. The lawyers on our extensive circuits were
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indeed brother lawyers in habits and feeling. There was no professional jealousy among us. We lodged at the same taverns, ate at the same tables, and often to the number of eight or ten slept in the same large chamber. Generally we were employed on the circuit in cases as they arose, and went to trial on one or two days' notice. The social habits of the Bar rendered study almost impossible ; hence the pleadings and practice were loose and irregular. My habits were studious, and I felt the obligation of preparation strongly, and was often almost churlish in withdrawing from a convivial party. to study my coming cause, to the annoyance of my more liberal brethren. But they bore with my eccentricities most kindly, and, though sometimes loud, they were never bitter in their denunciations. For instance, one evening the Bar was having a pleasant sitting at our common hotel on the circuit. Happening to have a case which required study, I was out in quest of authorities, and, as the fun grew ' fast and furious,' I returned with a law book under my arm. Dick Douglas, our wit par excellence, exclaimed as I entered the room, ' Here comes the living embodiment of inalice at Common Law, a heart regardless of social duty, and fatally bent on mischief.' The mischief on which I was fatally bent, was a special plea or demurrer with which to defeat some good jolly brother-lawyer's case."
The following discussion of Mr. Ewing as a lawyer at the full tide of his successful practice is compiled mainly from an article by the Honorable John Welch :
" The most remarkable thing in Mr. Ewing's method of trying a case was the Napoleonic genius with which he concentrated all the forces at a single point. When you came to the trial and raised your first point, to your surprise he would concede it and you would throw aside your notes in its support. And so of all your other points but one; and when you came to that you would be met by a prompt and vigorous ' No, sir.' By this time he has gained with court and jury such a character for fairness and candor that the battle is half won before the argument begins. And when you came to the argument you found that, deep as you may have gone down into the law and reason of the case, there is a lower depth where he has been. You find, moreover, that his posi- tion is defended by a bulwark of solid logic, unthought of by you, bristling with winning metaphors and well-chosen. sharp-pointed Anglo-Saxon words. His very statement of the proposition is itself an argument. He seizes it with an iron grasp, which nothing but victory can relax. In one of these tilts with an adversary, Mr. Ewing offered an item of evidence of doubtful competency, on a rather immaterial point, in an early stage of the trial. His adversary objected and sustained the objection with quite an argument. Mr. Ewing did not reply further than to say that there were 'authorities both ways' on the question. The court rejected this evidence. When they came to the vital part of the case it was found that evidence of the same nature was a sine qua non to the adversary's case. Mr. Ewing claimed that his adversary was estopped by the former decision. The court so ruled. and Mr. Ewing gained the case. In his concluding remarks, he made the following quotation from some anti- quated version of David's psalms :
"' The wicked man, he dag a pit, He dag it for his brother; And for himself he did fall in The pit he dag for t'other.'
" He was capable of the severest sarcasm when occasion justified it, but rarely resorted to it, and when he did, it was in an unimpassioned and quiet way. His witticisms were frequent, but never vulgar or impure, and always
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in the line of the argument. His manner towards his adversary was always kindly and conciliatory, and if his wit or sarcasm wounded him, he won him back by heaping kindness on his head. He was lenient and generous towards younger members of the bar, treating them as equals, and rendering them assistance and instruction whenever necessary and proper. Mr. Ewing was not a graceful speaker; his gestures were clumsy but natural. Direct and unconven- tional in manner, plain in attire as in speech, his movements of body and mind had an impetus suggestive of power to render obstruction futile. There was not always absent something of the unconscious air of a conqueror. Aside from intellectual processes and legal knowledge, his presence carried with it an undefinable ascendency of will and character. He was not an orator in the popular sense. And yet, in a proper case, a case involving pathos, he could reach the heart, flush the cheek, quicken the pulse, and start the tear. He did it without parade, calmly and without any attempt at euphony. In such cases he spoke to the heart, and not to the eye or ear. On the right side of a ques- tion he was invincible, and in doubtful cases seldom failed to triumph. His arguments were perfect illustrations of the science of logic. He made his path as he went sufficiently bright to enable the audience to follow him and find it 'growing brighter and brighter unto the perfect day.' Proposition followed proposition in regular consecutive order, compelling the hearer to anticipate the final conclusion before it was reached by the speaker; and when reached by him it was driven home to stay. His weapon was a battle-axe, and it was wielded with a giant's strength. In both thought and expression he was daring and confident. His style was smooth, plain and Addisonian ; never florid, or abounding in ore rotundo. It could be transcribed from the tongue to paper without material alteration. Almost every word was the right word in the right place, and no other word of equal force and significancy could be found to take its place. But thought and things, and not words, were his forte. With him language was a mere instrument with which to draw from his great storehouse of learning. And it was a great storehouse. It was a happy union of common sense and science, two elements not often found united in the same person. In him they both abounded in a remarkable degree. His long life was a life of study. He never forgot, but constantly reviewed, continued and enlarged his classics. Notwithstanding his extensive practice, he found time and strength to go over nearly the whole field of human knowledge. Hardly any subject escaped his research, and he had a memory that retained everything he acquired. He was an adept in the exact sciences and a born mathematician. He was familiar with Shake- speare, Milton, Byron and other English poets. He was at home in astronomy, history, zoology, anthropology and physiology. He was a botanist, a chemist and a psychologist. Besides all this, he was, of course, deeply read in the law-the common law, the civil law and the American law. He was a walking encyclopedia, and his memory was the index. He never, however, lumbered his mind with triviality, such as the page, the number of the volume, the name of the case, or the like. He had no room in his capacious mind for such little things, filled as it was to overflowing with the recollection of foun- dation principles, ready to be drawn upon at any moment. But the great secret of Mr. Ewing's success-its cause of causes-is the fact that he was a giant in intellect. He was a born lawver, equally as Homer was a born poet. Nature gave him a brain and a heart which no adverse surroundings could stifle or control. Those 'twin jailers of a daring heart,' lowly birth and poverty, had no prison that could hold him. With his own manly arm he broke the bars, and escaped into a wide world of knowledge and usefulness."
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