USA > Pennsylvania > Northampton County > History of Northampton County [Pennsylvania] and the grand valley of the Lehigh, Volume I > Part 33
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At this original term of this county's court seven other men besides Lewis Gordon were admitted as lawyers. Their names were James Reed, Benjamin Price, James Biddle, John Moland, John Price, William Pidgeon and Samuel Johnson. All of these men were members either of the Bucks or Philadelphia county bars. Lewis Gordon immediately was appointed prothonotary and clerk of the Court of Quarter Sessions of the new county. James Biddle was made king's counsel, an office to-day known as district attorney; William Craig became sheriff, and the clerk of the Orphans' Court was bestowed upon Easton's honored pioneer, William Parsons.
For fourteen years this court, as well as the other courts, were held in the village taverns. After this time, removal was made to the court-house.
In 1753, the second year in the separate history of this judicial district, only one admission to the bar is recorded, but that name looms large in the history of Pennsylvania and of the nation. It was Edward Shippen.
Edward Shippen was born at Philadelphia, February 16, 1729. In 1748 he went to London to complete his law studies at the Middle Temple. Return- ing to Philadelphia, he was immediately admitted to the bar. On November 22, 1752, he was appointed prothonotary of the Supreme Court, a position
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which he retained until the Revolution. He became a member of the Provin- cial Council in 1770, in which office he served for five years. On May 17, 1784, he became president judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, and in the same year was raised to the position of judge of the High Court of Errors and Appeals, an office which he held until that court was abolished in 1806. In 1791 he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court, in which he served until 1799, eventually being appointed chief justice. An impressive memorial of him is in the reports of Addison and Dallas, the pioneer reports of Pennsylvania, which largely were composed from notes of trial kept by him.
Although several lawyers were admitted in the few succeeding years, Lewis Gordon remained the only resident attorney in the county until 1765, when a notable newcomer appeared in the person of John Ross of Bucks county.
John Ross, in the beginning, was a school teacher at Durham. Here his talents of mind and character attracted the patronage of Richard Backhouse, then the great man of affairs of that section. Backhouse advised Ross to locate in Easton and to take up the study of law. Backhouse further offered to maintain him at his own expense until he should become admitted. Upon his admission, Ross took up his residence at Easton, occupying a house upon the site of the present residence of the late General Frank Reeder. He had a wide and lucrative practice. In middle life he became a member of the Society of Friends. Such was his distinction as a lawyer that in 1818 he was appointed judge of the Seventh Judicial District, at that time comprising Bucks, Mont- gomery, Chester and Delaware counties. He served in this capacity until 1830, when he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court.
The year 1765 marks the admission of more lawyers to practice here than has taken place in any other year before or since. Not less than twelve men in the year 1765 became members of the Northampton county bar.
The succeeding decade again was featured by the admission of numerous lawyers from other counties coming to Easton to try one or more cases. In 1777, however, a notable addition to the bar was made by the admission of Robert Traill, who spent nearly all of his life in this community, and who was actively engaged for many years in the larger litigation of our courts. He was thirty-three years of age at the time. When war broke out and a com- mittee of safety was formed for the county, Mr. Traill was elected clerk and served as such for two years. March II, 1777, he was appointed military storekeeper at Easton, a position which he declined. In 1781 he was elected sheriff and served the county for three years. In 1785-86 he was a member of the General Assembly. At the close of his legislative career he was elected a member of the Supreme Executive Council of the State. In 1790 he was com- missioned by Governor Mifflin one of the associate judges of Northampton county, and held that office for two years. He died at Easton, July 31, 1816.
The year of 1779 stands a golden milestone in Northampton's legal his- tory. In this year three young men successfully sought admission to our bar. Their names were John Swift, John Coxe and Samuel Sitgreaves. The first attorney is difficult now to identify. John Coxe, however, instantly is recog- nized as a brilliant lawyer of Bucks county.
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Samuel Sitgreaves was born in Philadelphia, March 6, 1764. He was a son of William Sitgreaves of Philadelphia. Completing a thorough preliminary education, he enrolled as a student at law in the office of James Wilson, one of the greatest lawyers of his day and a signer of the Declaration of Independ- ence. Samuel Sitgreaves was admitted to the bar at Philadelphia, September 3, 1783, being then twenty years of age. He was admitted to the bar of Northampton county in 1779. Practicing before the local court for seven years, he imbibed a fondness for the locality and came to Easton to live in 1786. In 1790 he became a member of the State Constitutional Convention, and as a member of that body took a prominent part in establishing the lead- ing features of our present constitutional government. His ability soon won for him an election to Congress in 1795 and a re-election in 1797. Although only thirty years of age he became a leader in debate and achieved national distinction for his defense of President Washington, who had refused to send the documents relating to the Jay treaty to the House of Representatives. A controversy had arisen between Great Britain and the United States over the unsettled boundaries, a dispute so acute that war again seemed inevitable. This controversy, as is well known, was settled by the celebrated Jay treaty. Under this treaty a commission was necessary to adjust the debts claimed by English subjects from citizens of the United States. Samuel Sitgreaves was appointed a member of this commission. The commission convened in London and accomplished its object. Mr. Sitgreaves also achieved national fame in his advocacy of the impeachment of William Blount, a senator from Tennessee. His conduct as leading counsel for the government in the action against John Fries, the instigator of the Fries Rebellion, is notable in the historical annals of the country. He returned to Easton in 1802 and devoted the remainder of his life to local labors of a public character. His was the hand that made the original draft of the constitution of Pennsylvania. He drew the Act of Assem- bly incorporating the Borough of Easton and was the first town clerk. His hand also wrote the act of incorporation of the Delaware Bridge Company, and he served as its original secretary and treasurer. As is well known, he was one of the founders of the Easton Library, founder of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the city, and was also one of the early presidents of the Easton National Bank.
During the decade from 1781 to 1791 each year was signalized by the admission of some lawyer of Pennsylvania whose memory stands to-day gigantic in the history of Pennsylvania and of this county. Among these men were Jared Ingersoll and Joseph Reed. Joseph Reed was the Northampton county attorney who served as aide-de-camp to George Washington. His biography comprises such an important part of the history of our country that it would be superfluous to sketch it here.
With the commencement of the year of 1791 occurred an event, simple and commonplace in its time, but which should be and will be treasured among the foremost traditions of the Northampton county bar. This was the coming to Easton of a young man by the name of Joseph Hopkinson, famous in his- tory as the author of the patriotic anthem, "Hail Columbia." Only fancy now can restore the picture of this young attorney seeking a place somewhere
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around Centre Square to open an office and to reside, and of the incidents surrounding his admission to the bar. Curiously, no mention is made of this young man in any local history excepting one, and this mention merely states that he visited the city, yet in his biographies we may read that he lived and labored in the city of Easton for a fair period of time, founding his career here, and ever after regarding the place with affection and later occasionally returning to plead important cases in the court in which he was cradled. How such a jewel in Easton's historic diadem as Joseph Hopkinson could be over- looked by the antiquaries is incomprehensible. Even a cursory search for traces of him finds books in the Easton Library bearing his autographic inscription and which must have been presented by him to the early library or to some friend after his departure from the city. Joseph Hopkinson was born in Philadelphia; he was the son of Francis Hopkinson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He practiced as a resident attorney of Easton for about three years, when he returned to Philadelphia and took an active part in the legal and political life in that city. Rising through numer- ous offices, State and Federal, he finally became judge of the United States District Court for this district, where he sat for many years with singular distinction.
Pennsylvania's first State constitution, penned by the Easton lawyer, Samuel Sitgreaves, was adopted in 1790. It provided for the erection of the county of Northampton into a separate judicial district to be presided over by its own judge. The name of this district was given as the Third, and that name the district retains to the present day, symbolic of the county.
Up to this time the trial courts of record of the county had been held by justices of the Supreme Court "at nisi prius, at Easton," spring or fall "Assizes," so the records run. In looking back to ascertain the names of the justices who held these courts we find with pride that generally they were James Biddle, Edward Shippen or Benjamin Chew, all of whom at one time had been members of the local bar.
The character of the litigation in the first forty years of our courts is interesting. Turning the pages of the civil dockets we marvel for a moment at the frequent actions of ejectment and then we realize that these are reflec- tive of a new country getting under way. Suits for the use or disturbance of water rights, actions on bills and notes, replevins, account render, and actions for debt, all were common to the practice of that old day.
Northampton, with its vast domain originally reaching to the New York State line, of course provided a large mass of litigation. The litigants appar- ently were satisfied with the results of their trials, for comparatively few appeals are to be found in the early reports.
Criminal trials were few in number. One of these, nevertheless, was widely celebrated on account of the law points involved. This was the action of Respublica vs. Mullato Bob, a trial for murder, resulting in a conviction of murder in the first degree. On this trial a slave was not permitted to testify on the broad ground that all slaves were to be rejected as witnesses in court. The case was appealed and Chief Justice Mckean sustained the contention as to the incompetency of a slave to testify.
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Easton in those happy early days formed a link in a circuit comprising Newton, Chester, Lancaster, Chambersburg, Bedford, Uniontown, Harrisburg and Sunbury. The judges and counsel travelled from town to town holding court. The means of conveyance was upon horseback, and in the saddle- bags upon each horse usually was to be found the rider's entire law library. These consisted usually of a small volume of the Pennsylvania Statutes, Blackstone's Commentaries, Hale's Pleas of the Crown, with perhaps one or two English books presenting the leading cases of the common law. But those circuit riders were great lawyers. They were legal builders, for they are the men who reasoned out the fundamental equities of situations and rela- tionships and established the principles of law upon which modern legal prac- tice is founded. The lawyer of to-day who rises in court and reads from the reports principle after principle of law, unconsciously is memorializing his fellows of bygone days who possessed the genius to deduce and formulate these elementary rules of right. And frequently indeed the old lawyers thus entitled to credit are the giants of Northampton's early bar.
With the adoption of the constitution of 1790 our courts assumed an organization very similar to that under which they are conducted to-day. The judges, however, were appointed and not elected.
The first lawyer to sit as judge for this district was Jacob Rush, who had been admitted to our bar in 1780. He was a native of Philadelphia county and a member of the famous family of that name which achieved patriotic distinction in many ways during the Revolutionary War. He was a graduate of Princeton and a distinguished soldier of the war. Four years after his admission to the Northampton county bar he was commissioned a justice of the Supreme Court of the State and later a member of the High Court of Errors and Appeals. He presided over our courts for fifteen years, when he resigned to accept the position of president judge of Philadelphia county.
It was during his term of office that the insurrection occurred near Beth- lehem known historically as Fries' Rebellion. The indictments for high treason growing out of this affair were found in the District Court of Philadelphia. The appeals from two of the cases, one against John Fries himself, tried alone, are to be found in the third volume of Dallas's Reports. The elaborate opinions of Judge Iredell reflect many fine and fundamental objections to the procedure raised on the trial, all commonplace to-day, but novel then, and which succeeded in obtaining a new trial for Fries.
Judge Rush was succeeded by John Spayd, who was born in Dauphin county, but who read law at Reading. His tenure of office here was only three years. He was followed upon our bench by Robert Porter, who bril- liantly conducted the courts for twenty-two years. Prior to his commission as judge he had been one of the leaders at the bar of Philadelphia. During the ensuing five years Garrick Mallery presided over our courts and main- tained the same high standard of judicial conduct that had been set by his predecessors. He resigned in 1836 to resume his practice, in which he rose to exceptional prominence throughout the State.
John Banks, the fifth judge of Northampton county, at the time of his appointment was the leader of the Mercer county bar. He served here
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eleven years, resigning to assume the position of State treasurer of Pennsyl- vania.
And now we come to a personality which is gigantic in the legal history of the Commonwealth, John Pringle Jones. Graduating from Princeton, he began the study of the law in Philadelphia, where he was admitted. Sub- sequently, however, he formed a partnership in Reading with Robert M. Barr, a lawyer, familiar to the legal fraternity through his compilations known as "Barr's Reports." The two volumes of Pennsylvania reports known as "Jones' Reports" were written by Judge Jones after the death of Mr. Barr in order to complete the latter's work. Judge Jones was appointed judge for Northampton in 1847 and served until 1852. Twelve years later he was again appointed to complete the unexpired term of Judge Maynard. Judge Jones' career as a jurist and publicist is too vast and varied to be chronicled in a sketch of this limitation. It is to be found, however, in the voluminous works of biography of distinguished Pennsylvanians.
Washington McCartney, the seventh judge of Northampton county, came here from Westmoreland county to assume the chair of mathematics in Lafayette College, in which he served one year, 1835-1836. Resigning from Lafayette College he returned to Jefferson College, from which he had grad- uated, only to return the succeeding year to Lafayette College, where he held various professorships for several years. Having concurrently studied law, he was admitted to the bar of Northampton county in January, 1838. From 1846 to 1848 he served as deputy attorney general of the county. He was the first judge to be elected by the people under the Amended Consti- tution, taking his seat in 1851. He died in July, 1856.
Henry D. Maxwell, the successor to Judge McCartney, was born at Flemington, New Jersey. He studied law at Somerville and later at Belvi- dere, New Jersey, in which State he was admitted to the Bar, September 4, 1834. opening up his office originally in Phillipsburg. He was admitted to the Northampton county bar November 25, 1834, and practiced with Hon. J. Madison Porter. He served as deputy attorney general in 1848 and 1849. He was chosen counsel of the United States at Trieste by President Zachary Taylor in 1850, a position which he held for a year. Judge McCartney hav- ing died in office, Governor Pollock appointed Mr. Maxwell judge of the county July 21, 1856. Judge Maxwell again was appointed by Governor Curtin in 1862.
John King Findley occupied the bench of Northampton county from 1858 to 1862, thus following Judge Maxwell and in turn himself being succeeded by the latter.
John King Findley was born at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, May 12. 1803. He was a graduate of Wset Point and served for a time as a lieu- tenant of artillery and later as professor of chemistry and various other sub- jects at the Military Academy at West Point. He was admitted to the Penn- sylvania bar in 1831. He served as recorder of Lancaster from 1841 to 1845, judge of the Philadelphia District Court 1845 to 1851, and president judge of this district 1857 to 1862.
During this long interval from the Revolution to the Civil War the fame
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and ability of Northampton's judges were paralleled by the distinction of the county's lawyers. Since the talents of many of these men forced their later elevation to the county's bench, their careers will be briefly sketched in a later paragraph devoted to the great judges who graced our courts from the Civil War down to the present day.
Reading over the roll of attorneys who practiced here following the Revolution, the eye alights upon many names which space prevents from amplifying into a biography. These men did not seek or accept great public offices, but confined themselves strictly to the practice of the law.
Here and there among this galaxy, however, gleam illustrious names that require more than passing mention. The first of these we find under a court minute of admission, dated April 20, 1818. It is the name of James M. Porter.
James M. Porter was born near Norristown, January 6, 1793. In his early years he was assistant to his father, General Andrew Porter, who was surveyor general of Pennsylvania. In 1818 the position of deputy attorney general of Northampton county was offered to young Porter. He accepted the position and removed to Easton, where in the course of time he rose to the leadership of the local bar. In 1838 he sat as a member of the Consti- tutional Convention of Pennsylvania. In 1843 he served as Secretary of War of the United States. In 1853 he was elected president judge of the twenty- second district, composed of the counties of Wayne, Pike, Monroe and Carbon.
A figure always associated with that of Judge Porter in the recollections of the older members of the bar is that of Alexander Brown. Poring over the records and supreme court reports we find these two giants frequently opposed to each other in the trial of a cause and occasionally associated together. The cases, however, which were so fortunate as to have them as opponents are lighthouses along the legal coast, for these cases invariably are characterized by elaborate and brilliant briefs which necessarily drew similar opinions from the court which decided between them.
Alexander Brown was a native of New York City. He came to Easton and sought admission to our bar August 24, 1825. Thereafter, for forty-two years he assiduously practiced his profession in this county, leaving an inde- structible monument to his memory in the many and varied actions upon our court dockets which today luminously carry his name.
A third towering personality that looms down upon us from a distance of almost one hundred years is that of Andrew Horatio Reeder.
Andrew Horatio Reeder was born July 12, 1807, in the city of Easton. He read law with Peter Ihrie, an old-time lawyer of large practice and wide reputation. Following his admission to the bar in 1831 he rapidly rose as an attorney. His career was characterized by an active participation in political affairs. Although holding no public office, his reputation became so great that he was elected to serve as the first governor of Kansas. Follow- ing a brilliant and spectacular administration of this office he returned to Easton and devoted the remainder of his life to the practice of law.
The number and importance of the causes entrusted to him may be
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estimated from the single statement that the appellate reports name twenty- three important cases which he argued and presented. In these he established some of the most important of the fundamental principles of the law of Penn- sylvania.
From the rolls of our courts another name flashes upon us and prompts us momentarily to pause. It is that of Richard Brodhead-this Titan of an elder day.
Richard Brodhead came to Easton in 1830 and read law with James M. Porter. His exceptional qualifications for public life, however, did not long permit him to remain in the quiet routine of a practising lawyer. He soon was chosen as a member of the House of Representatives of Pennsylvania. From that House he passed to the House of Representatives of the United States and finally became a senator of his country, the last Democratic United States Senator from Pennsylvania. In the city of Washington the great Court of Claims is his enduring monument, for it was his genius that con- structed this court and his hand that penned the law which legislated it into existence.
When a boy is named after a Lord Chief Justice of England, and when that boy to manhood grown adopts the profession of the law, he faces an extraor- dinary obligation. In many instances he fails to meet the exaction. Mat- thew Hale Jones, of the Northampton county bar, did not. Through- out his long life he practiced law indefatigably, exclusively and brilliantly, and when he was done, an added lustre had been given locally to the name of Matthew Hale. A feature of Mr. Jones' life, that he never sought or accepted public office, causes to rise the memory of another great lawyer, a successor of Matthew Hale Jones, and who, likewise, did not vary his pro- fessional career by the administration of a public office, notwithstanding the attractive opportunities which from time to time invited him. This man was the elder Edward J. Fox. Mr. Fox was the son of Judge John J. Fox of Bucks county and the descendant of a line of lawyers. An examination of the cases which he conducted in the Supreme Court reveals the fact that they involved and through him settled some of the most important principles of law in the legal structure of the Commonwealth. From the pictured walls of the court room the kindly faces of these two men, enframed in gold, today look down upon the busy court, ever impressively reminding a new genera- tion of attorneys of the great and happy distinction of the lawyer who ever and exclusively plies his profession.
The task of guiding the litigation of the county in the difficult period that bridged the days of the Civil War to times of peace, fell upon John W. Maynard, the tenth judge of this county, who sat upon the bench from 1863 to 1868. Originally admitted in Tioga county, he established a practice at Williamsport in 1840 which he continued for nineteen years and left to become a judge of Allegheny county. He was still acting as judge there when appointed president judge of the Third District. +
Judge Maynard having resigned in 1868, was succeeded by A. Brower Longaker. Judge Longaker was a graduate of Union College and read law with Washington McCartney at Easton. He was admitted to the Northamp-
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ton bar August 19, 1853. He formed a partnership with his father, Judge Henry Longaker, at Norristown. He served in the Legislature repeatedly as the representative of Montgomery county, acting during one of his terms as speaker of the House of Representatives. It was during his term that Lehigh county became a separate judicial district. Upon this division Judge Longaker selected Lehigh county as his district and removed to Allentown.
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