USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Wilkes-Barre > A history of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania : from its first beginnings to the present time, including chapters of newly-discovered early Wyoming Valley history, together with many biographical sketches and much genealogical material. Volume V > Part 4
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Wilkes-Barre until 1841, with what success one might judge from the diary entry of a young Philadelphian, who was visiting in Wilkes-Barre in August. 1840. The diary entry reads :
I should like to remain here another day, as the ladies were telling me that there will be a general turnout of the Wilkes-Barre girls tomorrow-they having determined to visit the court "en masse" to hear a lawyer by the name of Woodward address the jury in behalf of four men on trial for murder.
In 1841, Mr. Woodward followed his old law partner, Judge Mallery, on to the bench of the Fourth Judicial District, becoming, in his turn, the presi- dent judge of that district. Judge Woodward had done well in the Consti- tutional Convention of 1836, and was to give even more valuable service in a later Constitutional Convention, that of 1873. In 1844, he was Democratic candidate for United States Senator, but was defeated by Simon Cameron. In the next year President Polk nominated Judge Woodward for a seat in the Supreme Court of the United States ; but Senate opposition brought the nom- ination to nought. Judge Woodward, however, had not given up his Common Pleas seat, and he continued as President Judge of the Fourth District until 1851. Then he declined nomination to succeed himself, preferring to resume law practice in Wilkes-Barre. Ere another year had passed, however, Judge Woodward was again in judicial robe, going, in 1852, to the State Supreme Court, in the place of Justice Coulter, deceased. In the fall of that year, he stood before the electors for confirmation of his appointment, and he secured election for a full term of fifteen years. For four years of this period he was Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. He was the unsuccessful candidate for the Governorship, against Andrew G. Curtin, in 1863. After retiring as Chief Jus- tice, he was elected to Congress, and was given a second term. Death came to him while he was in Rome, Italy, on May 10, 1875.
Warren J. Woodward, into whose office Stanley Woodward went from Yale Law School in 1856, was another of that distinguished Wilkes-Barre family of lawyers to attain judicial eminence. In 1856 he was appointed President Judge of the Twenty-sixth Judicial District then created; and at election time in that year was elected by the people. He resigned in 1861, to take like office in the Twenty-third Judicial District, and, as president judge of this district, he was given a second term in 1871. In 1874, he was elected to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, of which tribunal he was an associate justice until his death, in 1879, when in his sixtieth year.
The fifth member of the same distinguished Wilkes-Barre family of law- yers to become a judge was John Butler Woodward, until 1925 a judge of Common Pleas of Luzerne County. He was a son of Judge Stanley Wood- ward. Mr. Bedford draws attention to a somewhat interesting connection of the Woodward and Mcclintock families over the greater part of a century of prominence of both families at the bar of Luzerne County. He writes : .. . it is interesting to recall that in 1836 George W. Woodward moved the admission of Andrew T. McClintock. Twenty years later, in 1856, Andrew T. McClintock moved the admission of Judge Woodward's son, Stanley. After twenty years more, that is, in 1876, Stanley Woodward moved the admission of Mr. McClintock's son, Andrew H. McClintock. In 1885 Andrew H. McClintock moved the admission of J. Butler Woodward, and in 1912 J. Butler Woodward moved the admission of Gilbert S. McClintock; thus this pleasant function descended from father to sons and grandsons, in the two families, in alternate succession.'
Reverting now to the direct story of the Eleventh Judicial District, it became apparent during the 'eighties that a second additional law judge would be needed to cope with the growth of court business. Since the resignation of President Judge Harding, at the end of 1879, after Lackawanna County had been separated from Luzerne, the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County
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had consisted of President Judge Rice and Additional Law Judge Stanley Woodward. In 1891, under the provisions of Act of April 29, 1891 (P. L. 35), which authorized the appointment of another additional law judge in the Eleventh District, Governor Beaver appointed John Lynch (1843-1910), who had lived in Wilkes-Barre most of his life. After preparatory course at the Wyoming Seminary, Lynch had entered the law office of Judge Harding. From 1865 until 1891, he practiced law in Wilkes-Barre, and was worthy of the preferment that Governor Beaver gave him in 1891. At the end of that year, he was elected for a full term, and, when reelected in 1901, he became president judge. He died in August, 1910.
In 1895, upon the resignation of President Judge Rice to organize the Superior Court, Judge Stanley Woodward was advanced to President Judge of Common Pleas, and Lyman H. Bennett was appointed to the vacant addi- tional law judgeship. He was elected in due course, and on January 1, 1896, began a full term of ten years. Death, however, came to him before he had completed three years (October 1, 1898).
He was succeeded by Gaius Leonard Halsey (1845-1911). He was a native of Nesquehoning, Carbon County, but was educated at the Wilkes-Barre Academy, afterwards going to Tufts College, Massachusetts, from which he was graduated in 1867. After a period in civil service in Washington and Harrisburg, he studied law with Lyman Hakes and Charles E. Rice. He was admitted to the bar of Luzerne County in September, 1872, and from that time until 1898 practiced in Wilkes-Barre. His appointment to a judgeship was followed by election for a full term beginning January 1, 1900. He lived only a year after retiring from the bench, death coming on February 16, 19II.
With the new century, it became necessary to still further enlarge the Common Pleas bench, to cope with the ever-increasing court calendar. On July II, 1901, therefore, act was passed (P. L. 655) which gave the Eleventh Judicial District a third additional law judge. Frank W. Wheaton, a leading Wilkes-Barre lawyer, was appointed, and subsequently elected. He served until 1907, then resigning to resume his law practice which had been substan- tial. Judge Wheaton, born in Binghamton, New York, on August 27, 1855, graduated from Yale in 1877, and studied law in the office of E. P. and J. V. Darling, of Wilkes-Barre. In September, 1879, he was admitted to the bar of Luzerne County. In 1890 he became a partner of his preceptors, and upon the death of J. V. Darling, in 1892, formed the law firm of Wheaton, Darling and Woodward.
With the appointment of a third additional law judge in 1901, the judicial personnel of the Eleventh Judicial District was as follows: John Lynch, presi- dent judge ; Gaius L. Halsey, George Steele Ferris, and Frank W. Wheaton, additional law judges. Judge Ferris (1849-1913), a native of Pittston, and a graduate of Allegheny College, Meadville, Pa., and Columbian Law School, Washington, District of Columbia, opened law office in Pittston in 1872. For almost thirty years thereafter, he maintained an extensive law practice. He was a Common Pleas Judge for eleven years, his term ending with the year IQII. After the death of Judge Lynch, in August, 1910, Judge Ferris became president judge.
Upon the resignation of Judge Wheaton in 1907, Henry Amzi Fuller was appointed to succeed him. Judge Fuller is still in office, and for many years has been president judge. More regarding his distinguished career will be given later herein. Of "Mayflower" ancestry, Judge Fuller was born in Wilkes-Barre on January 15, 1855, son of Henry Mills Fuller, who became one of Wilkes-Barre's leading lawyers and eventually sat in Congress. Henry A. graduated at Princeton University in 1874, and then began to read law in the office of Henry W. Palmer at Wilkes-Barre. In January, 1877, he was adınit- ted to the bar, and soon came into public notice as a lawyer.
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To succeed Judge Halsey at the end of 1909. John M. Garman was elected. He was born in Thompsontown, Juniata County, Pennsylvania, on December I, 1851. After graduating from the Bloomsburg State Normal School in 1871. he taught school for thirteen years. While principal of Tunkhannock schools. he continued the reading of law he had begun at Mifflintown. He entered the law office of William M. and James W. Pratt, of Tunkhannock, and in due course, in June, 1884, was admitted to the bar of Wyoming County. Remov- ing to Nanticoke in 1886, he was admitted to the Luzerne County Bar. He had developed an extensive law practice in Nanticoke before his elevation to the judiciary, in 1909.
The death of Judge Lynch, in 1910, brought Benjamin R. Jones into Com- mon Pleas office, by appointment, to serve from September of that year until the end of 1911. Judge Jones was succeeded on January 1, 1912, by Peter A. O'Boyle, who was of Irish birth, but had spent all but three years of his life in this country. He was only three years old when his parents, in 1864, set- tled at Pittston. In the schools of that place he was educated, and in the office of Alexander Farnham he studied law. In 1885, he was admitted to practice at the bar of Luzerne County, and came into particular notice as district attorney.
An opportunity to give Judge Jones a further term on the Common Pleas bench occurred in 1913, when, by Act of July 21, 1913 (P. L. 872), Luzerne County was permitted to have a fourth additional law judge. To this office Judge Jones was appointed, but he declined the honor. Thereupon Mr. Dan- iel A. Fell was appointed, to serve until the end of that year. In November, 1913. Mr. J. B. Woodward, a former law partner of Judge Wheaton, and a son of Judge Stanley Woodward, was elected to succeed Judge Fell. Thus, he carried another generation of the famous Woodward family into the judiciary. He was well fitted to uphold the distinguished record of his family, but not until his death, in 1925, was it fully realized how widely he had been respected in his native city, by bench, bar, and laity.
On April 6, 1925. Governor Pinchot appointed Attorney Clarence D. Cough- lin to the vacant judgeship. Born in Kingston, Luzerne County, July 27, 1883, son of probably the foremost educator of all time in Luzerne County-see Chapter LIV-Judge Coughlin came to the bench well founded in academic and legal knowledge. After graduating at Harvard University, in 1906, he taught in schools of Luzerne County for some time, but took the legal exam- ination in 1910 and was admitted to the bar. In 1912 Attorney Coughlin fol- lowed Roosevelt in the Progressive campaign, but in 1917 was appointed county chairman of the Republican party. In 1920 he was elected to Congress from Luzerne County. After one Congressional term, he returned to the prac- tice of law.
Associate Judge William Swan McLean, Jr., was born in Wilkes-Barre and is a graduate of Lafayette. He studied law under his father, and, during the World War distinguished himself in the military service, being decorated in France for bravery in action. After the war, he became colonel of the reor- ganized 109th Pennsylvania Field Artillery. In 1926, he became a brigadier- general. Judge McLean is the subject of more extensive reference in another volume. Associate Judge Benjamin R. Jones is also mentioned elsewhere. Associate Judge John S. Fine was elevated to the bench on January 3, 1927. one of the last judges appointed by Governor Pinchot. Judge Fine takes the vacant seat caused by the death of Judge Garman, November 25, 1926. The latter's judicial service had been especially good. It was his brilliance, as a lawyer. that in the first place brought him, a Democrat, enough votes in 1909 to defeat Judge Halsey, who was standing for reelection. And it was his merit as a judge that caused Republicans to forego party considerations in reëlecting Judge Garman in 1919. In the short time that Judge Fine has been on the bench, he has shown that he is a worthy successor of the deceased
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jurist. In the Domestic Relations Court his opinions are often unusual, but always logical, indicating that his hearings of multitudinous domestic differ- ences are not merely taken as matters of routine, but are marked by alertly reasoned and clearly grasped analyses of domestic problems. For example, one of his recent decrees in Non-Support Court indicated that wives who neg- lect their homes and go to dances unaccompanied by their husbands need not expect to find support orders awaiting them in his court. Judge Fine was born in Luzerne County, April 10, 1883, attended Nanticoke public schools, and took the law course at Dickinson College, graduating, as Bachelor of Laws, in 1914. In 1915 he was admitted to the bar of Luzerne County. He went to France, in military capacity, during the World War, and before returning home took a graduate course in law at Trinity College, Dublin.
The only other member of the bench of Luzerne County in 1927 who has not yet been mentioned is Judge Eugene Foster Heller, who has charge of the Orphans' Court. It would perhaps be well to separately trace the history of this court.
The Constitution of 1873 permitted counties in which 150,000 or more people resided to have a separate Orphans' Court. Indeed, it was mandatory in the case of counties of such size; it was, likewise, mandatory that such separate orphans' courts established be conducted by a judge or judges "learned in the law." This was not to be a lay court, such as are orphans' courts in some states. According to the new Constitution, the orphans' courts of Pennsylvania were also to take over the jurisdiction of register's courts. Under the constitutional requirement, and particularly under Act of May 19, 1874 (P. L. 206), a separate Orphans' Court for Luzerne County was formed, with Daniel la Porte Rhone as president judge.
Judge Rhone was born in Luzerne County on January 19, 1838. He was edu- cated at Wyoming Seminary and at Dickinson. Admitted to the Bar of Luzerne County in April, 1861, just as the Civil War was beginning, the young lawyer did not begin practice until after the military call had been personally met. After the war, he settled in Wilkes-Barre to practice. For a term he was Dis- trict Attorney of Luzerne County, and as such became favorably known in professional and public circles. In 1874, he had no difficulty in securing nomination and election to the Orphans' Court then created. Reelected in 1884, he served another full term of ten years in this court. He will be remem- bered as the author of Rhone's "Practice and Process in the Orphans' Courts of Pennsylvania." He died March 29, 1908.
His successor on the bench of the Orphans' Court, in 1895, was Alfred Darte, who was born at Dundaff, Pennsylvania, April 28, 1836, the son of Judge Alfred Darte. As a young man, Alfred Darte, Jr., followed the course at Wyoming Seminary and later read law in his father's office, in Susquehanna County. In May, 1859, young Darte was admitted to the Bar of Luzerne County, and settled at Kingston. When war broke out in 1861, Attorney Darte enlisted as a private in a Pennsylvania regiment of infantry. Soon he was commissioned and joined a troop of Pennsylvania cavalry. He was in command of a company of cavalry in Virginia in June, 1864, when severely wounded. This honorably ended his war service, and he returned to his pro- fessional work. He was prominent in the municipal affairs of Kingston, served two terms as District Attorney of Luzerne County. Judge Darte was Orphans' Court judge from the beginning of 1895 until his death on July 20. 1901.
In October of that year George H. Troutman was appointed to the vacant judgeship, but in November of the same year another was elected Orphans' judge. The other lawyer, Andrew M. Freas, was elected for the full term of ten years, and at its expiration was reelected for a further ten years. Judge Troutman (1841-1909) was a native of Philadelphia, in which city he was
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admitted to the bar in 1862. He came to Luzerne County in 1874, and in that year was admitted to the county bar. Judge Freas was born in Berwick. Pennsylvania, on October 31, 1862. He graduated from Bucknell University in 1886, and then took the law course of Yale University, graduating there- from in 1890. He entered the law office of Judge Lynch in Wilkes-Barre, and in 1891 was admitted to the Bar of Luzerne County. Ten years of capable practice brought him favorable public notice and the Orphans' Court judgeship.
Eugene Foster Heller, who became Orphans' Court judge in 1921, was born in Hazleton, March 9, 1880. He was educated in Hazleton public schools, and at Dickinson College, graduating from the latter, as Bachelor of Laws, in 1905. Admitted to practice at the Luzerne County Bar in the same year, he opened an office in Wilkes-Barre, and soon came under favorable notice as a lawyer. He has earned even more favorable notice as a jurist.
With this year, 1927, President Judge Fuller ends his second term of ten years as a judge of Common Pleas in the Eleventh District. Much to the regret of almost the entire bar of Luzerne County, President Judge Fuller has announced that he will not seek reelection. During recent years, however, he has been called upon to make some difficult decisions, some in which his sterling integrity as a jurist and profound knowledge of law drew him to decisions which were not liked by the average citizen nor by the politicians. Especially is he popularly criticized for his recent decision in the coal tax assessment appeals. But Judge Fuller has never put office first. Recently, he remarked to newspapermen: "Certain individuals and journals have inti- mated that by the decision (Coal Tax Assessment Appeals, which, if upheld, will, it is asserted, bring bankrutpcy to some municipalities) I drove a big long nail into my political coffin. If that be so, I am quite content with the prospect of a political interment and willing to drive a few more nails of the sort if they ought to be driven." If he retires, he will do so with honor. He had never permitted outside interests to in any way swerve him from a judicial decision that his understanding of the law dictated. His opinions have made him widely known. They show characteristics somewhat like those of the peerless Gibson, particularly in their originality of thought and freedom from the entangled chains of quoted legal precedents. Invariably logical, always forceful. Judge Fuller occasionally originates a striking phrase to add empha- sis to his thought. It was he who described reckless autoists as "wild asses of the macadam." Judge Fuller is esteemed by almost every member of the bar of his district, and the regret will be general if he should hold to his determina- tion not to be a candidate for reelection. His retirement from the bench will be a distinct loss to Luzerne County.
In reviewing the history of the courts of Luzerne County, the survey has necessarily been largely of the bar of the county. But some of the most capable lawyers have never sought judicial office. One of the most successful Wilkes-Barre lawyers of the last century was Andrew T. McClintock, "who gave more years to the continuous practice of law than any other member of the Luzerne bar." He was admitted to the bar in 1836. Three decades later (1867) "lawyers and laymen alike and by a common instinct turned to Mr. McClintock, and persistently urged him to accept the place" of additional law judge. Mr. McClintock, though grateful, then declared: "I am adverse to public life and greatly prefer the bar to the bench." He appeared regularly in court until he was seventy-five years old, "and for the remaining seven years of his life he rarely missed a day at his law office," writes George R. Bedford in his "Early Recollections," a paper that he read before the Wyoming His- torical and Geological Society in November, 1917. Mr. Bedford's own life story is another instance. Admitted to the Bar of Luzerne County in 1862, when Wilkes-Barre's population was not much more than four thousand, George R. Bedford continuously practiced for more than sixty years; and not
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once during all those years did Mr. Bedford seek public office. As he himself wrote: "In all these years I have never held public office, but have ever been content with the private station and the practice of my profession." Mr. Bed- ford was signally honored in 1911 by election to the presidency of the Penn- sylvania Bar Association ; but he did not regard this office as public. With the exception of Mr. Alexander Farnham, who was admitted in 1855 and was still in fairly active practice in 1917,* Mr. Bedford at the time he wrote his "Recollections" was the only surviving lawyer of those who were in practice at the time he was admitted. In sixty years of continuous association with the members of the Luzerne County Bar, he had come to know most of them intimately, and also to see most of the eminent men of what he terms the "Old Bar" pass away. No one is, therefore, better qualified to write of the Bar of Luzerne County; and, if the writer of this might interject an opinion, readers might peruse a dozen reminiscent articles before finding one as inter- estingly written as that which this veteran of the local bar, George R. Bed- ford, put into historical record in 1917. Having little space available, the writer cannot do more than touch here and there a few of the richest gems of Bench and Bar information contained in Mr. Bedford's "Early Recollec- tions," which take up the first 107 pages of Volume XVI (1918) of the Pro- ceedings of the Wyoming Historical and Geological Society.
His reminiscences go back even as far as 1848, when he witnessed the wel- come tendered to Captain (later Judge) Edmund L. Dana upon his return home with his company of Wyoming Artillerists from active service in Mexico. It was a "turnout of practically the whole valley," the reception and parade being followed by an address of welcome delivered by Judge John N. Conyngham.
Mr. Bedford writes even of one of the first four attorneys on the organiza- tion of the county in 1787-of Putnam Catlin, or rather of Putnam's son, George Catlin, who was born in Wilkes-Barre in 1796, was admitted to the bar in 1819, but who soon forsook law for art. Catlin became famous for his por- traiture of Indians, his collection of Indian portraits ultimately finding honored place at the National Museum at Washington. Once, it seems, George Catlin was in France, received in audience by King Louis Philippe, who told him that more than fifty years earlier, in 1797, when an exile, he had stayed over night "at a little village named Wilkes-Barre." By the way, the first four attorneys admitted to practice at the Bar of Luzerne County were Ebenezer Bowman, Putnam Catlin, Roswell Welles and William Nichols. Roswell Welles, who married a daughter of Zebulon Butler, was "an accomplished lawyer and a finished orator."
Many of the early lawyers Mr. Bedford mentions have already been referred to in their judicial connections. As Mr. Bedford says, the Bar of Luzerne County. as a whole, from early times, was known throughout the State and was recognized as of marked ability. He points to Luzerne County's contribution of "Justices George W. Woodward and Warren J. Woodward to the bench of the Supreme Court; Garrick Mallery, a very distinguished law- yer, to the bench of Berks and Northampton counties; Oristus Collins to the bench of Lancaster County; Luther Kidder to the bench of Schuylkill and Carbon counties ; Winthrop W. Ketcham to the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ; Charles E. Rice as President Judge of the Superior Court, and Henry M. Hoyt to the Governorship of Pennsyl- vania." Mr. Bedford takes pride in remarking that "the professional career of each of these eminent lawyers prior to his advancement was of the Luzerne Bar." The careers of most of these great lawyers have already been reviewed herein.
*Mr. Farnham died in February, 1920. He had been a member of the bar for sixty-five years, a record Mr. Bedford himself did not quite equal.
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At the time of Mr. Bedford's admission to the Luzerne County Bar, there were not more than forty lawyers resident in the county. Fifty-five years later, in 1917, there were about three hundred. Confining his reminiscences to the "Old Bar," Attorney Bedford devotes three pages to the life of Judge John N. Conyngham, "the acknowledged leader of the bar at the time of his election to the bench in 1839." Ex-Judge Oristus Collins, who was admitted in 1819, spent some years in Lancaster County as a judge, but returned to Wilkes- Barre to practice in 1839. He was still in practice in 1862, when Mr. Bedford was admitted, and is described by the latter as "a striking figure, considerably above the average height, very erect, long white hair, deep-toned voice and withal a venerable appearance." At that time Judge Collins was in his 'seven- ties. He lived to the venerable age of ninety-two years. His "very decided vein of humor" was illustrated by the following anecdote : "On one occasion. in the early days of the Bar Association, he remarked to Judge Conyngham in court 'that he had just visited the law library and had painfully observed the absence of a volume which was the fountain of legal principles.' whereupon he drew from its concealment a copy of the Bible and begged the court's accept- ance of it from him as a gift to the library then being formed."
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