USA > Ohio > Richland County > History of Richland County, Ohio : (including the original boundaries) ; its past and present, containing a condensed comprehensive history of Ohio, including an outline history of the Northwest, a complete history of Richland county miscellaneous matter, map of the county, biographies and histories of the most prominent families, &c., &c. > Part 56
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Finally becoming convinced of his error. he laughed as heartily as any, and concluded the cheapest way out of the scrape was to "set up the camphene" for the crowd.
He raised a company and served honorably through the Mexican war; and when the war of the rebellion broke out, he offered the first full company to the Governor of the State for three months' service. He afterward went into the three-years service, but being some- what advaneed in years, could not withstand the fatigues and exposures of a soldier's life. Dying in camp "with the harness on," he was brought home and buried with the honors of
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war. Scott's beautiful verse seems appropriate here.
"Soldier, rest ! thy warfare o'er, Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking ! Dream of battle-fields no more, Days of danger, nights of waking."
Among the early Associate Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, no one, perhaps, was better known or more highly appreciated than Gen. Robert Bentley. He came to Richland County in 1815, from Western Pennsylvania, and was appointed Judge in 1821. At the ex- piration of his term of office, in 1828, he was elected to the State Senate. He was a man of military tastes, also ; was in the war of 1812, and subsequently filled every position in the Ohio militia, from Ensign up to Major General. During his whole life, he was a prominent, in- fluential and worthy citizen.
Among all these members of the Mansfield bar, who have gone to the " shadow land," what figure stands out more prominently in the mind's eye than that of the genial, large-hearted, large-brained " Tom " Ford ? He, too, was a veteran soldier, serving in two wars. Gen. Brinkerhoff thus writes of him: " Gov. Ford was a man cast in nature's largest mold; a man of imposing personal presence, and pos- sessed of great natural gifts as a orator. Some of his efforts upon the stump have rarely, if ever, been excelled. His speech at the Know- Nothing Convention, in Philadelphia, gave him a national reputation. As a specimen of crush- ing repartee, nothing in the English language excels it. Pitt, in his palmiest days, never made more brilliant points in the same space than did Gov. Ford in that speech. It was an occasion that called out, fully, his peculiar pow- ers. None knew him intimately who did not become attached to him. He had faults, but they were faults of the head and not of the heart."
After the war, he drifted to Washington City, where he practiced law until his death, in 1868.
For several years before his death, he was an earnest worker in the temperance cause. and a member of the Methodist Church.
Mordecai Bartley occupies a prominent place in the liistory of Mansfield, as a citizen, a law- yer, and a man. He was a Captain in the war of 1812; was elected to the State Senate in 1817, and was afterward Register of the Virginia military school lands. He was sent to Congress in 1823, serving in that body four terms, and declining a re-election. In 1844, he engaged in mercantile and agricultural pursuits, and was elected Governor of the State on the Whig ticket. Declining a re-nomination for Gover- nor, he spent the evening of his days in the labors of his profession and his farm.
In later years, Judge Jacob Brinkerhoff and John Sherman, members of the Mansfield bar, became prominent in the State and nation. The former was, for many years, one of Ohio's Su- preme Judges. He was elected to Congress by the Democratic party, in 1843, and rendered himself famous as the author of the Wilmot Proviso. The Judge is yet living, though in very feeble healthı.
Later still, L. B. Matson and Milton W. Worden came upon the stage of action, per- forming well their parts, and passing away, while yet in the prime of life. Matson, at the time of his death, as a trial lawyer, stood at the head of his profession, and had the largest practice of any lawyer in the city. Perhaps nothing could better indicate the public esti- mate of Judge Worden than the following ex- tract from the remarks of Henry C. Hedges, in his announcement of Judge Worden's death to the court. Judge Osborne presiding: " By the voice of my brethiern at the bar, a sad. solemn duty is mine. Since the last adjournment of this court, death has been with us, and a mem- ber of this bar, one well known, highly re- spected and much loved by us all, has been summoned from the labors of time to the reali- ties of eternity. Death, during the years I
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have been at the bar, has been no infrequent visitor. A Mitchell, young in years, to whom the doors of the temple of justice were only opened, not having been permitted to cross its threshold ; a Parker, far advanced in age, with a mind well stored with all the learning of the law ; a Stewart, of most majestic face and form, while in the perfected fullness of his intellect- ual powers ; a Mclaughlin, with head all sil- vered with age, but with a heart all ablaze with patriotic fire, unmindful of ease, giving his last days, as he did the earlier years of his life, to his country and her flag ; a Johnston, in middle life, scholarly, eloquent, with an Irishman's keen wit, but an Irishman's warm heart; and a Ford, of grand stature, of great physical strength, with intellectual endowments, if aroused, equal to any emergency, but for the most time inactive and useless, because not used. All these we have known ; we have for a time gone in and out with them, and then they were not; and now, again, has this bar been convened to pay the last sad tribute of love and respect to one of its members-Milton W. Worden." Judge Worden was but twenty-nine years of age, but a man of brilliant promise, though undeveloped as a lawyer. He went into the army, and lost a leg at Harper's Ferry. Returning home, he was elected Probate Judge, and was subsequently appointed Internal Rev- enue Assessor, which office he held at the time of his death. He was followed to the grave by the Odd Fellows' societies and Young Men's Christian Association, of which he was a mem- ber, and a large concourse of citizens.
As an estimate of the earlier Mansfield bar, nothing could be better, perhaps, than the following from the pen of Gen. Brinker- hoff, who knew all these men in their prime : "When I was a student at law, in 1850 and 1851, the giants of the Mansfield bar were Jacob Parker, James Stewart, Thomas W. Bartley, Jacob Brinkerhoff and Samuel J. Kirkwood. Gen. Mclaughlin and John M.
May had passed their zenith. James Purdy had become a banker. Charles T. Sherman was at his best. He did a collecting business, but rarely appeared in the courts as a trial lawyer. John Sherman had promise, but no large ful- fillment as yet. So, also, Col. Burns and Col. Isaac Gass.
" Thomas II. Ford was at his best, and was a man of great natural powers, but was indolent and careless and did not make the mark he might have made at the bar. Judge Geddes was the partner of Judge Brinkerhoff, and was a young man of ability, which rapidly devel- oped and subsequently made him an able law- yer and one of the best-balanced common-pleas judges in the State.
" Henry P. Davis, Manuel May, Robert C. Smith and several others had their shingles out, but were not famous as yet. I knew them all very well.
" Parker, Stewart and Bartley were specially friendly to me, and I appreciated it. I have always retained a warm remembrance of all of them. I was a student with Brinkerhoff & Geddes.
"Judge Stewart was the reverse of Judge Parker in his mental make-up. The latter was pre-eminently a book lawyer, and could give from memory volume and page for every decis- ion of any special consequence in the Ohio Reports, and, probably, could refer off-hand to more legal precedents than any man in the State. He read the dryest law reports with all the zest of a school-girl with her first novel. It was all meat and drink to him.
"Judge Stewart, on the contrary, cared but little for the Reports, and consulted them to fortify his own judgment rather than to guide it. He was a born jurist, and his instincts of right and wrong were so keenly accurate that he rarely went astray. His decisions were very rarely questioned, and still more rarely set aside by a superior court ; in short, he was by common consent the model Judge of his time,
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and, probably, has never had his superior in this circuit.
" Off the bench, in the practice of the pro- fession, Judge Parker and Judge Stewart were still more opposite in their characteristics. Parker was essentially an office lawyer, and a very superior one, but had no special ability before a jury. He stammered in his utterance, and had none of the gifts of oratory.
" Judge Stewart, on the other hand, was a mighty man before a jury. The sweep and power of his eloquence was overwhelming, and carried everything before it. His large, portly and commanding presence was of itself suffi- cient to hold the attention of the jury, but, in addition, he had all the best qualities of a great jury lawyer.
" His physical endurance seemed inexhaust- ible, and he was apparently as fresh at the end of a trial as at the beginning. As a jury law- yer, Judge Stewart has never been surpassed at the Mansfield bar.
" Next to Parker and Stewart in age, and fully their peers in mental ability, came Thomas W. Bartley and Jacob Brinkerhoff. They were rivals, and always pitted against each other. Bartley was the most persistent man among them. He was not as fine an orator as either Stewart or Brinkerhoff, nor as well read as Par- ker, but he had the tenacity of a bull-dog, and an industry that was endless and tireless. These qualities made him a very dangerous antagonist. He deservedly stood in the front rank of Ohio lawyers.
" Judge Brinkerhoff, Bartley's most frequent antagonist, was the most brilliant man of this whole legal galaxy, and the most attractive speaker. At repartee, he was as quiek, sharp, and bright as lightning, but he lacked the ten- acity of Bartley and the ponderous weight of Stewart. Juries were delighted with Brinker- hoff and detested Bartley ; the former was brief, brilliant and beautiful; the latter, dry, tedious and harsh. Brinkerhoff rarely spoke over an
hour ; Bartley rarely spoke less than three hours, and sometimes, as in the Welch murder trial, he held on three days. The result was they were very evenly matched. If either pre- dominated in the crucible of success it was Bartley's pertinacity. In fact, Bartley could never be considered vanquished until the ver- diet was returned, judgment entered, execution issued and returned satisfied.
" Brinkerhoff was a man of more general cult- ure, perhaps, than any of his competitors, as he read everything and remembered everything. Perhaps it does not become me as his kinsman to say it, yet I think the general judgment of his cotemporaries will bear me out in saying that he was, in all respects, a model lawyer and a model man. He was brilliant, scholarly and thoroughly honest.
" A little incident I remember is a fair index of his whole life. When I was a student in his office, he was politically under a cloud. He was a Free-Soil Democrat, and for this was tabooed by his party and despised by the Whigs. I was riding with him one day, and suggested the propriety of supporting his party in all that was good, leaving the slavery ques- tion for a more propitious period in the future. His reply was, ' I cannot play Hamlet with Ham- let left out. I am a Democrat, but it seems to me that opposition to slavery is the heart of Democracy. I know I am down politically, and probably I shall always remain down, but the time will come when my children, or my grandchildren, will remember me with more honor on that account than for anything else in my history.'
" Samuel J. Kirkwood was just coming into prominence, and gave great promise ; but he took a notion to go to Iowa in 1855, and did not, therefore, rise to his true eminence at the Mansfield bar. The fact that he has since been twice Governor, and is now in the United States Senate, is a sufficient indication of the metal he is made of.
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"The decade from 1845 to 1855 was the golden age of the Mansfield bar, and a more brilliant galaxy of lawyers, probably, was never congregated in a single city in Ohio. We of a later generation can hardly hope to attain to the stature of these giants of our pioneer times.
" Doubtless we have good lawyers now, and, in special departments, better lawyers ; but as
general practitioners, our predecessors, who grew up in pioneer times, were larger men as a whole.
"Such lawyers as Thomas Ewing, Sr., old Peter Hitchcock and Edwin M. Stanton were the products of pioneer soil, and such men do not seem to grow in this day and genera- tion."
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS OF RICHLAND COUNTY.
THE OLD BLOCK HOUSES AS COURT HOUSES-THE FIRST BRICK COURT HOUSE-THE PRESENT COURT HOUSE- THE JAILS, INFIRMARY, ETC.
T' THE court houses of Richland County have been four in number, and in improve- ment, in every possible way, they have kept pace with the improvement of the county. The old court houses have been torn down and others erected as fast as the increase in popula- tion and general improvement demanded, until the present magnificent structure was reared, which, it is thought, will last several genera- tions before the continually advancing ideas and progress of civilization will require one of greater dimensions and later style of archi- tecture. During the war of 1812, two block- houses were erected on the public square, as a protection against the Indians. One was of round logs and the other of hewed logs, the latter standing near the center of the north side of the park. After the war, or rather before the war ended, this hewed-log house was used for the first court house in the county. The preparation of this block-house for a court house is officially warranted and preserved in the Commissioners' records. Under date of July 10, 1813, it states that " the Commission- ers proceeded to examine the block-house in Mansfield, and to order the same to be pre- pared for the reception of the court, and that the lower part of the same be prepared for the reception of prisoners as a jail. And do further order that the said lot of carpenter work be sold to the lowest bidder, on the 24th day of July inst., which sale is advertised accord- ingly."
" Ordered, that the said work be done in the following manner, to wit. : Two floors of solid
hewn timber, of the thickness of at least six inches, to be squared and jointed in a workman- like manner ; and on the outside, a stairway, with a platform at the head thereof of suitable size, and a door to enter the upper story there- from, with suitable casings and hinges for the same ; and a glass window, containing twelve lights of glass, cased in like manner as the door ; and suitable seats for the court ; and a latch for the upper door, and lock and chain for the lower door, and iron hinges for the same, all of which work and preparations must be done in a workmanlike manner."
On the 4th of August following, the bids were opened, and Mr. Luther Coe was the lucky man. His bid was $46, with an additional one for the construction of a hand-rail for the out- side stairway, for which he was to receive $2. On the 7th of September following, Mr. Coe having completed his contract, received his pay by an order on Winn Winship, the agent of James Hedges, for the amount of the consider- ation agreed upon. being $48. which is ordered to be paid out of a certain donation, which the said Hedges agreed to pay for the use of the public buildings in the town of Mansfield.
The first session of the court was held Satur- day, August 28, 1813. The Associate Judges were Thomas Coulter, William Gass and Peter Kenney. The further proceedings of this court are referred to in another chapter.
This block-house seems to have answered the purposes of a court house for three years.
July 8, 1816, " the Commissioners proceeded to lay down the particulars of a plan for a new
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court house and jail to be erected, and filed the same for inspection of all such persons as may wish to undertake the building of the same."
On the 9th of July, 1816, "the Commissioners proceeded to sell at public auction the building of the court house and jail, which was struck off to Jacob Snider and Lewis Lyberger at $1,990, they being the lowest bidders, who gave bond with Peter Snider and Andrew Newman as securities, in the sum of $3,980, conditioned for the faithful performance of their undertaking, agreeable to the which is fully delineated in said bond."
On the 3d day of December, 1816, by order of the Commissioners, "the two block-houses standing on the public square were set up at public auction, and were bid off as follows : The hewn-log house to Alexander Curran, at $56.40 ; and the round-log house to Jacob Snider, at $20-who severally obligated themselves to pay the said sums into the county treasury."
Thus was the first seat of justice in Richland County-which was erected without cost, and with only the labor of a squad of soldiers-dis- posed of for a paltry sum, torn down, and prob- ably compelled to descend from the proud po- sition of a seat of justice of a great county, to do duty as a corn-erib or pig-sty.
The new court house was built of hewn logs. The logs were one foot square, and were laid up in double tiers one foot apart, and the space filled in with stone up to the second story. The first story was used as a jail ; and the second story was the court room. When the jury went out to deliberate, they were accommodated with quarters in some private house or barn. This court room was also used for a town hall, and for religious meetings and Sunday school. It was, in fact. the only publie building for about ten years, while the village was gather- ing around it, and was used for publie meet- ings of any and every kind. This building is more fully described in a quotation from a letter of Rev. James Rowland, published in the
chapter containing the pioneer history of Mans- field. This may be called the second court house, though it was the first one built exclu- sively for that purpose.
As population, wealth and business increased, it began to be felt and talked, that a larger and more modern structure must be erected, and in 1827, this culminated in the erection of a brick court house at the very moderate cost of $3,000. During the time occupied in the erection of this building, court was held in an old frame warehouse, which stood on the southeast eor- ner of Second and Main streets. This brick was number three, and stood about the center of the north side of the square, near where the hewed block-house stood, and its form and proportions have not yet faded from the memo- ries of the people of the city. It was a very plain brick house, square, and, at first, but two stories in height. Those who have use for a court house were about twenty-four years in getting ashamed of this building, or at least suf- ficiently ashamed of it to demand a change. It answered all the purposes of a court house for that length of time, but for some reason it never exactly suited, and it was decided in 1851 to make it more imposing. That is about all that can be said of the addition ; it was of no value as a part of a court house, but perhaps it did make it more imposing. A third story was added, which was never used, and this third story was extended beyond the original build- ing on the north and south sides, and for the support of this extension. heavy brick columns were erected. About $15,000 was the cost of this addition, no doubt intended to improve the architecture of the old building, but if such was the object, it cannot be called a brilliant success.
The following extract is from the Mansfield Herald of January 23, 1873, about the time the new court house was dedicated and the old one was being demolished :
"On the 7th of February, 1851. the Board of Commissioners adopted a plan presented by
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B. McCarron, to whom we thus trace the honor of being the architect of the old court house. Be his name embalmed. On the 8th, they or- dered advertisements for bids for contract thereof. This contract was, on the 19th of April, awarded to McCarron & Sheffler, who agreed, for the sum of $7,000, to put the old court house into the traveling condition in which it appeared but a few weeks since. But they proved to have the happy faculty of pil- ing in extras, and were allowed therefor, until the remodeling cost from $14,000 to $16,000, which exact amount seems never to have come to the vulgar eye. Like some ships and womankind, the rigging cost vastly more than the hull.
" The old court house has never been a fa- vorite with our people, not from any intrinsic fault of its own, perhaps, but because it looked bad, which the poor thing could not help. The destroyers are now upon it, and it will soon be numbered among the things that were. Yet its old bricks and mortar have long heard the thrilling tones of eloquence, the fiat of the law, the shriek of anguish, the appeal for justice, the trials for murder and larceny, for divorce and seduction, backed by eloquence in all its branches. The calf-pen of the Judge, the well-seasoned seats where the weary jurors alternately cursed and slept, the chicken-coop above them all-all, all are gone to repair a stable or stop the holes where ' looped and windowed raggedness' gave passage to the winter's snow. The room where the tax-pay- ers have annually grumbled ; where the decds of all the soil have been recorded ; where all the accounts, pro and con, have been audited, and where the bashful swain has so often come to get cured of lovesickness, by securing the document that authorized him and some one else to become one flesh, with two dispositions- have been disrupted, as have many of the mar- riages therein authorized. The gouty pillars of plastered brick, as expressionless as the
lumber that surmounted all, are being demol- ished and borne away, no longer to annoy the cye of taste or sadden the memory of those who have been actors in its dingy premises."
Thus, in 1873, passed away the old court house, which had withstood the storms of nearly half a century, which had come to the little hamlet in the wilderness, and left it a city.
The immense cost put upon the reconstruc- tion of the old court house, and the outland- ish appearance and inconvenience of the struct- ure created universal dissatisfaction, if not disgust. The Commissioners, under whom the work was done, became unpopular in the ex- treme, as did the result of their labor, and but a few years elapsed before a vote was called upon the question of erecting a new court house. It was on three separate occasions defeated by the people, and finally the law of 1869 was passed, authorizing the Commission- ers of counties to purchase grounds, erect court houses, jails, etc.
In that year (1869), the Commissioners pur- chased of Mrs. Mary E. Reid and S. E. and J. W. Jenner the three lots on the southeast cor- ner of East Diamond and East Market streets, on which the new court house stands, for the sum of $16,500. These lots were then much higher than the street, but were graded down to a level with it.
January 12, 1870, the Commissioners, David Taylor, D. M. Snyder and J. T. Keith, entered into a contract with H. E. Myer, architect, of Cleveland, to furnish a plan and specifications for a new court house, which plan was accepted, and the 10th of May set apart for opening bids for construction of the same. The entire dimen- sions, except the steps, are 104x129 feet ; height of basement 12 feet in the clear ; first floor 18 fect ; second floor, 16 feet ; court room, 31 feet.
The contract was awarded on the 10th of May, to William Miller, J. G. Frayer, and Leonard Sheets, for $177,000. On Tuesday, the 27th of
Mary Willy.
Christian Welly
HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.
389
the following September, the corner-stone was laid with Masonic ceremonies. A large assem- blage was present, a procession marched throughi the streets, and Hon. Jacob Brinkerhoff deliv- ered an address, giving a very complete history of the bench and bar of the county.
The new building was finished, and dedicated with much ceremony January 22, 1873, on
pressed brick, rustic stone quoins filling the corners and decorating all the windows and doors. The roof is mansard, giving the whole the Anglo-Franco expression, combining ancient orders with modern improvements. It is beau- tiful in design and general appearance, solid and substantial in its construction, fire proof except the roof, and conforms to the general
LOEKENTHAL.CO.SC.
RICHLAND COUNTY COURT HOUSE.
which occasion a large number of citizens gath- ered in the new court room. The meeting was presided over by Hon. George W. Geddes, and short speeches were made by many prominent citizens, the regular oration being delivered by Gen. Roeliff Brinkerhoff, in which he gave a general history of much value and interest.
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