USA > Pennsylvania > Perry County > History of Perry County, Pennsylvania, including descriptions of Indians and pioneer life from the time of earliest settlement, sketches of its noted men and women and many professional men > Part 72
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Ann West Gibson, an educated and talented woman, to whom he was indebted for much of his early education. With the deter- mination that her sons should not degenerate she built a school- honse near the homestead and there, herself, became the teacher. His preparatory education was received at the preparatory school attached to Dickinson College, where he later graduated. The exact date of his graduation is in doubt. He began to attend col- lege in 1795 or 1796. In the Union Philosophical Society of the college his name first appears in 1797, but in later published rec- ords of the students of the college his name appears in the Class of 1798. Biographical sketches generally place the date of his graduation as 1800. He was classed as an irregular student, his terms not being consecutive. His graduation occurred during the presidency of Charles Nesbit, D.D. He read law with that bril- liant jurist, Thomas Duncan, later an associate justice on the su- preme bench. He was admitted to the Carlisle bar in 1803 and located at Carlisle, but soon left to locate in Beaver County. From there he went to Hagerstown, but by 1805 was back in Carlisle, resuming his practice there. In 1810 he was elected by the (then) Republican party as a representative to the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, being reelected the following year. Judges were then appointive and the governor of Pennsylvania, Simon Snyder, was married to a cousin of Mr. Gibson, which accounts for his first step up the ladder, probably, but his rise was one of attain- ment altogether. His appointment was made in 1813, as judge of the Eleventh Judicial District, in the northern part of the state.
When Gibson was a student at college he drew the attention of Judge Hugh H. Brackenridge, who noticed the "country boy" and invited him to use his fine library. Through his long life he often mentioned this act, which created a lifetime friendship. A strange coincidence is that Judge Brackenridge, Mr. Gibson and his pre- ceptor, Thomas Duncan, all came to be justices of the Supreme Court of the state. All did not sit together, however, as Gibson's appointment came immediately after the death of Brackenridge. At the time of being made a justice of the Supreme Court John Bannister Gibson was a common pleas judge of the newly created Eleventh District. He was appointed June 27, 1816, the day fol- lowing the death of Judge Brackenridge, by Governor Snyder. Appointments were during good behavior, which practically meant for life. During the fall of 1812 Mr. Gibson had been united in marriage to Sarah Galbraith, a daughter of a retired Revolutionary officer. On his appointment to the supreme bench, they moved to Carlisle, where they continued to reside, although the sessions of court called him afar.
Of Gibson's mother it is said that she was a devout member of the Church of England ( Episcopal), and attended the services of
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St. John's Church at Carlisle, fifteen miles distant, across the Kitta- tinny Mountain, either afoot or horseback. The justice later, when at home at Carlisle, was a faithful attendant of this church. On an occasion she invited the bishop of her church to come over and baptize her boys. When he arrived they were gunning, and he retired before their return, as it grew late. During the night a slight snow fell, and the boys were off hunting before his reverence arose, and he never did get to see them.
From the pen of the late Benjamin F. Junkin, himself an author- ity of note on legal matters, we quote :
"Thus, as he started in 1816, his opinions for over thirty-six years, to 1853, when he died, are models of perspicuity, sententiousness and accurate diction. He had ceased to be chief justice in 1851, and the last opinion delivered by him was filed January 6, 1853, in the case of Beatty vs. Wray, reported in 7th Harris, page 517, determining 'that a surviving partner is not entitled to compensation for winding up the partnership business,' and after that his voice was heard no more. In his last opinion he said, 'At the formation of a partnership, its dissolution by death is rarely contem- plated. It is an unwelcome subject, for no man who enters on a specula- tion can bear to think he may not live to finish it,' and whoever will read that last opinion and shut his eyes to the date of its delivery, will not be able to distinguish his clear and vigorous language, citations of authori- ties and surprising grasp of the questions involved from one of his famous efforts of twenty years before.
"There was that about Gibson's opinions which cannot be described. While he entered learnedly into the question, with amplifications, his lan- guage was so terse, his words so few, the structure of his sentences so harmonious, so replete with elegance of diction, that the conclusion was reached, the point decided, and the judgment convinced ere the charm was broken. He described a negotiable note in four words, 'a carrier without luggage.'
"If we of Perry are proud of his achievements and wonderful powers, other places have not withheld their admiration. As a jurist he had a world-wide renown, wherever his language is spoken. It was difficult to tell when he read and how he obtained his legal learning, but we have seen him consulting books in the State Library very often."
While many of our readers will remember Judge Junkin, yet he was already a member of the bar while Judge Gibson was on the supreme bench and was a personal acquaintance, thus showing how closely we follow the period of the celebrated jurist.
While James X. McLanahan was in the United States Congress as the representative of the district of which Perry was a part, he was abroad and sat in the court of Westminster, where the twelve judges of England were hearing a case. A lawyer was reading an opinion to the court without stating whose it was, when the chief justice remarked, "That is an opinion by Chief Justice Gibson, of Pennsylvania." The lawyer admitted it was, when the chief justice replied, "His opinions have great weight with this court." The congressman related the story to Chief Justice Gib- son, in the presence of Judge Junkin, on an occasion, to which he
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replied, a tear stealing down his cheek, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country."
It was Chief Justice John Bannister Gibson that rendered the important decision which settled for all time that the powers of the legislature are not judicial, but constructive. In the case of De Chastellux vs. Fairchild (15 Pa. 18), decided in 1850. The legislature attempted to order a new trial in an adjudicated case. Justice Gibson said :
"If anything is self-evident in the structure of our government, it is, that the legislature has no power to order a new trial, or to direct the court to order it, either before or after judgment. *
* The power of the legislature is not judicial. It is limited to the making of laws; not to the exposition or execution of them."
In appearance Chief Justice Gibson was a powerful, broad-shoul- dered, tall man (over six feet). His face was handsome, intellec- tual and benevolent, with a florid complexion, and the oil painting of him which hangs in the Supreme Court room was pronounced by no less an authority than Judge Junkin as being "not recognizable. having, in fact, more the look and expression of the driver of a broad-wheeled wagon in the days when a six-horse team drew eighty hundred with a wheel locked, over the pike from Philadel- phia to Pittsburgh." IIe was slow in gait, unheedful of surround- ings, careless of personal appearance, and attracted attention. He was a connoisseur in music and painting, and was an adept on the violin. When Ole Bull played in Philadelphia, Gibson and another supreme judge attended, the other not being skilled along musical lines. While the audience was being held spellbound by the mar- velous performance of the prodigy, the other judge turned to Gib- son and remarked, "Let us go home; that fool will never get done tuning his fiddle." Gibson replied, "Why, you uncultivated heathen ! That's the most enchanting music I ever heard."
Until 1826 the Supreme Court consisted of but three judges : during that year it was increased to five. In 1827, upon the death of Chief Justice Tilghman, Gibson was appointed chief justice, and so remained until 1851, when the new Constitution's provisions required that the five men elected to that august body should "draw cuts," the one drawing the shortest term (three years) to be chief justice, and the one drawing the longest term (six years) to be his successor. Through that law the state was deprived of his wonderful ability in that important position, but had he lived he would have again became chief justice in 1854. as he drew the long term of six years. When the amended Constitution was adopted, in 1838. he immediately resigned as chief justice. Al- though party excitement ran high, Governor Ritner, a Whig, ignored it, and reappointed him. In 1851, of the five justices he was the only one to be renominated.
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Chief Justice Gibson discharged his duties until the illness which culminated in his death, on May 3, 1853. He sat in the Supreme Court with twenty-six different justices, none of whom, it is said, owed their position to him, save Judge Duncan, whose appointment he advocated. He was for twenty-four years chief justice and for thirteen years an associate justice. From 1824 to 1828 he was president of the Board of Trustees of Dickinson College. In the year following his elevation to the chief justiceship, the friends of General Andrew Jackson placed his name at the head of the Penn- sylvania electoral ticket, with the result that the ticket received in the state an almost unprecedented majority.
Judge Gibson was a lover of the theater, and he and Judge Rog- ers, an associate justice, placed a marble slab upon the grave of the celebrated actor, Joseph Jefferson, who died in Harrisburg in 1832, and whose body rests in a Harrisburg cemetery, the epitaph being written by Judge Gibson. He also wrote the inscription for the monument of his preceptor, Judge Duncan, at Carlisle, and drew the design as well as wrote the inscription for that of Dr. Charles Nesbit. D.D., whose attachment for the American cause made him an exile from his native land.
As a boy he showed considerable skill as an artist, and two paintings by him still exist, having been presented by his nephew, Frank W. Gibson, to the Allegheny County law library at Pitts- burgh. One represents Pulaski on horseback, and the other is his own likeness, painted on a poplar board. The latter was painted under unusual circumstances. While a law student at Carlisle he visited his mother at the parental home at Westover Mills, along Sherman's Creek, with the intention of going deer hunting. Dur- ing his entire holiday it rained, and, kept within doors, he painted the picture for amusement.
Chief Justice Gibson was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons of Pennsylvania, on December 27, 1823, being possibly the only man born within the limits of what is now Perry County to fill that high office.
Interested largely in geology he wrote several contributions along that line, which showed him to be an authority upon that subject. While acting in the capacity of judge in the Eleventh District and residing in Luzerne County, his method of relaxation was studying the coal formations and visiting the old Indian fortifications. The statement sometimes made that Mrs. Gibson claimed that the first anthracite coal fires were built in her home, is doubtless without foundation, as Judge Gibson was appointed as judge there in 1813, while coal had been discovered in the Wyoming Valley in 1787, a quarter of a century previous.
Justice Black said of him: "Abroad he has for very many years been thought the great glory of his native state." In addressing
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the students of the University of Pennsylvania, in 1904, Governor Samuel Pennypacker, himself a learned judge, said: "Be earnest and thorough. If your field be the law, follow the example and study the work of Gibson and Sharwood." To no other man is America indebted so much as to Gibson for his interpretation of the English common law and its adaptation to our needs for his upbuilding of our system of equity and for his interpretation of the Constitution. In the formative period of Pennsylvania law he refused to slavishly follow outgrown conditions, when justice and right pointed otherwise. At the time of his death he had been longer in office than any contemporary judge in the world. His opinions were an unbroken chain of logic. For vigor, clearness and precision of thought they had no equals. At the May term of the Middle District, in 1853, in memorializing his decease, Chief Justice Black, among other things, paid this fine compliment to Justice Gibson :
"He was inflexibly honest. The judicial ermine was as unspotted when he laid it aside for the habiliments of the grave, as it was when he first assumed it. I do not mean to award him merely that commonplace integ- rity which it is no honor to have, but simply a disgrace to want. He was not only incorruptible, but scrupulously, delicately, conscientiously free from all wilful wrong, either in thought, word or deed."
Ex-Governor Samuel Pennypacker, whose fame, both as a jurist and historian, far excels that of his ability as governor, in his book, "Pennsylvania, the Keystone," says of Chief Justice Gibson :
"What John Marshall was to the law of the United States, John Ban- nister Gibson, born in Perry County in 1780, was to the law of Pennsyl- vania. During the formative period, when principles were being estab- lished, he was the chief justice, and his was the directing mind, and among lawyers he ranks higher than such famous men as Story. He established the doctrine, now universal in America, that on the sale of goods the keep- ing of possession by the man who sells is a fraud as against creditors. He had been a member of the General Assembly, had written some verse, dabbled in art, and was regarded as an adept on the violin."
On an occasion Chief Justice Gibson and Daniel Webster at- tended a banquet in Boston. Mr. Webster left first and inadvert- ently took Mr. Gibson's hat. Unaware of that fact Judge Gibson put on Mr. Webster's hat and never discovered it until the next day, as it was a perfect fit. Each of these men had exceedingly large heads, about twenty-four inches in circumference, but Judge Gibson's was slightly the larger.
There existed a warm friendship between the supreme justice and his brothers, Francis and George, and throughout their long lives they lived in perfect accord. George, long Commissary Gen- eral of the United States Army, annually took the month of Octo- ber as his vacation, and much of it the brothers whiled away to- gether. General Gibson was a personal friend of General Jackson,
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later President, who was a great admirer of the chief justice, and on several occasions wanted to make him a supreme justice of the United States, but was overruled by political combinations. Had another vacancy occurred in that august body during the Jackson administration there is little doubt that it would have gone to Gibson.
The chief justice was the father of eight children, as follows: Anne Sarah, John Bannister, and Francis West, who died in child- hood ; Margaretta, married to Col. Charles McClure, who repre- sented the Cumberland district in the United States Congress and was secretary of the commonwealth during the term of Governor Porter; Anna Barbara, married to W. Milnor Roberts, once chief engineer of the state public works, whose name was associated with such projects as the Portage Road, the Harrisburg and Lancaster Railroad, and the Cumberland Valley Railroad; John Bannister II, a lieutenant in the First Artillery, U. S. A., at the breaking out of the Mexican War, brevetted for bravery; George, colonel of the Fifth Infantry, U. S. A .; and Sallie, married in 1851 to Capt. R. H. Anderson, of the Second Dragoons, U. S. A., a Southerner, and the last one of the thirty-three officers from South Carolina to resign from the United States Army in 1861, prior to the war between the States.
In these days of inflated salaries, it may be of interest to note that the highest salary ever paid the chief justice of Pennsylvania was two thousand dollars per annum. When the old historic State Capitol, the one replaced by the present building, was erected, Justice Gibson was one of the building commission appointed to oversee its construction.
Col. A. K. MeClure, native Perry Countian, noted editor and author, in his book, "Lincoln and Men of War Times," says :
"Chief Justice Gibson is one of the most notable characters of Penn- sylvania, and no one character is so carefully and so kindly studied by the legal profession of the state as is that of the great jurist. He stands in the annals of the commonwealth head and shoulders above his fellow great jurists, and his decisions are not only quoted in his state and country by judicial tribunals, but they have been quoted and commended in the courts of England. I did not know our great chief justice personally until within five years of his death, as he was chief justice of Pennsylvania a year be- fore I was born. His name was a household word in the community of my boyhood, as his place of birth was only a very few miles from my own home. His name was referred to with a pride that is natural in a primi- tive rural community when one of their own number has reached the high- est distinction in the state, and among my early recollections I recall the chief justice's brother, Frank Gibson, as the man who played the fiddle for nearly or quite all the dances, corn huskings and butter boilings of the neighborhood. The chief justice, like his brother, was passionately fond of the violin, and even until the latest years of his life he would retire to his room alone and enjoy his own music on his favorite instrument.
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"His magnificently chiseled face ever arrested the attention of even the most casual observer. I had few opportunities in my brief acquaintance with him of seeing him alone, but I sought every opportunity to do so because he was one of the most delightful conversationalists, and being from the same community that had given him birth he loved to talk about his own people and his neighbors for whom he cherished the liveliest affection. The only attempt he ever made at poetry was when late in life he visited the dilapidated home of his birth after an absence of many years. It is not a great poem, but it shows the simple tastes of the great jurist, and the heartstrings of love which went out to his old home surroundings. It might be said of Gibson's poem as Horace Greely said in reviewing the poems of John Quincy Adams, that they show 'what middling things a great man may do." I quote the first and last of the six stanzas :
" "The home of my youth stands in silence and sadness, None that tasted its simple enjoyments are there ; No longer its walls ring with glee and with gladness, No train of blythe melody breaks on the ear.
"'But time ne'er retraces the footsteps he measures ; In fancy alone with the past we can dwell; Then take my last blessing, lov'd scene of young pleasures. Dear home of my childhood-forever farewell."
WHERE GIBSON SLEEPS.
In the graveyard at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, over the Gibson plot, is a stone on which appear inscriptions from the pen of that dis- tinguished Pennsylvanian, Jeremiah S. Black, himself a jurist of note. On the face appears :
John Bannister Gibson, LL.D., For many years Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, Born Nov. 8, 1780, Died May 2, 1853, Also his wife, Sarah W. Gibson, Born Jan. 25, 1791, Died Jan. 25, 1861.
The inscription on the right :
In the various Knowledge Which forms the perfect Scholar, He had no superior. Independent, Upright and Able. He had all the highest qualities of a great Judge. In the difficult Science of Jurisprudence, He mastered every Department, Discussed almost every question and Touched no subject which he did not adorn. He won in early manhood And retained to the close of a long life The affection of his brethren on the Bench, The respect of the Bar And the confidence of the people.
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DANIEL GANTT, CHIEF JUSTICE OF NEBRASKA.
With our own illustrious Chief Justice Gibson and Colorado's noted and first Chief Justice Thatcher, Chief Justice Daniel Gantt, of the great State of Nebraska, completes that trio of Perry Coun- tians who have risen to places on the supreme bench. Daniel
DANIEL GANTT,
Chief Justice of Nebraska. One of three noted sons who became Chief Justices. Mr. Gantt was born in Perry County, taught the first free school in the State, practiced law at New Bloomfield and was a pioneer Temperance worker in Perry County.
Gantt was the son of Joseph and Mary ( Lobaugh) Gantt, and was born near the old Stone Presbyterian Church, on Middle Ridge, three miles west of Newport, on June 28, 1814. The name Gantt was originally spelled Gaunt, the ancestry in America being traced to Peter Gaunt, a native of Lincolnshire, England, who set-
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tled at Sandwich, Massachusetts, about 1630. Daniel Gantt was of the sixth generation in America, the line of descent having been as follows: first generation, Peter ; second, Hanninah, who removed to Shrewsbury, New Jersey, and was wed to Dorothy Butler ; third, Hanninah, Jr .; fourth, Joseph ; fifth, Joseph, Jr. (who came from New Jersey and settled on Middle Ridge) ; sixth, Daniel.
Chief Justice Gantt was educated in the schools of the period, not yet the time of free public schools, having attended the log cabin school located on his father's farm. He arrived at school age in the very year in which the county was organized. He studied surveying in 1832-33 at New Bloomfield. He studied law at New Bloomfield, in the office of Joseph Casey, who had been admitted to the bar in 1839, and at the August court of 1843 he was admitted to the Perry County bar. During his practice at New Bloomfield Mitchell Stever read law with him and was ad- mitted to the bar in 1844. He located at Omaha, Nebraska, in 1857, and at once gained distinction in his chosen profession. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him U. S. district attorney, and he held that office until his election to the Nebraska Legislature, two years later. He removed to Nebraska City in 1868, and in 1872 was elected judge of the First Judicial District, for the term beginning January 16, 1873. Under the provisions of the Consti- tution then in force he sat also as an associate justice of the Su- preme Court. On the expiration of his term, in 1875, he was elected to the supreme bench, and three years later became chief justice. He died May 29, 1878.
He was twice married, first, in 1843, to Agnes T. Fulton (some- times stated Nancy T.), kin to Robert Fulton, the famous inventor of the steamboat, by whom he had three sons and four daughters. In 1858 he was married to Harriet Cooper. Chief Justice Gantt was an uncle of Daniel Gantt, of Newport, and by marriage, of II. R. Patterson, retired passenger conductor of Harrisburg, for- merly of Perry County, who visited him while he was on the su- preme bench. While a young man, reading law, to meet expenses he taught a subscription school in Buffalo Township, and recorded in his diary, in the possession of his heirs, near Lincoln, Nebraska, are the facts showing that when the free school act was passed, the first school in Pennsylvania to be opened in accordance with that act was the one he taught, described as "at Col. Thompson's," which opened September 10, 1834. This location was in that part of Buffalo Township which has since become Watts. According to further entry in the diary Buffalo Township was the first district in the state to adopt the free school law.
Citizens of the community interested in its passage were in Harrisburg, and upon learning of its passage, rode home during
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the night bearing the news. The following morning Mr. Gantt declared his school a free school.
While an attorney at New Bloomfield Justice Gantt took great interest in the community and civic life. Ilis name is found as chairman of the premium committee of the first agricultural fair at that place, in 1852. Several years later he was its secretary. He was one of the men who purchased the grounds and laid out the present New Bloomfield cemetery in 1854. When a public meeting was held in 1856 declaring for "Free Kansas and no Popery" he was on the committee on resolutions. He was an important factor in the lyceum there in 1842-43, and for years thereafter. In 1844 he was the secretary. One of his educational addresses was so highly thought of that a committee publicly re- quested its reproduction in the county press, which was complied with. As long as he remained in the county his name was promi- nently connected with both the agricultural fair and the lyceums, as well as with all educational projects. When a society called the Sons of Temperance organized a branch in New Bloomfield in 1846, Mr. Gantt became its president. He was much interested in poli- tics, and in 1850 was a senatorial conferce to the Republican con- ference. The success of Justice Gantt is all the more marked when it is remembered that when a lad of ten he cut his left knee so badly that he was confined to the house for six months and emerged with a crippled limb which he carried through life. Jus- tice Gantt died at Nebraska City, May 29, 1878.
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