History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 159

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992

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John Bannister Gibson was born at Cumberland, Pa., in November, 1780. He was the son of Col. George Gibson, of the Revolutionary army, who was killed at the defeat of St. Clair, in 1791. The sub- jeet of our sketch was then eleven years old. His , State. Doubtless the whole commonwealth will mother, who was of the family of West, one of the | mourn his death. We all have good reason to do most gentle in Ireland, though sorely pinched for 80. The profession of the law has lost the ablest of its teachers, this court the brightest of its ornaments, and the people the steadfast defender of their rights, so far as they were capable of being protected by judicial authority." many years after her husband's death, stimulated and helped her son continuously. "My poor mother," he said once, in answer to inquiries concerning his ma- ternal ancestry, "struggled with poverty during the nineteen years she lived after my father's death, and Peter Stephen Du Ponceau was one of the most

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eminent of the men who came on after the Revolution, and he is specially to be commended for the services he rendered in the matter of putting the standard of law studies and law literature upon a high eminence ; many are the anecdotes preserved of this French-

tried for libel on Governor MoKan wa regarded as showing uncommon abilities. In the year 1811 he was appointed attorney-general of l'ennesivama, but held the office for only one year, preferring the ap- pointment of controller of the United States Treas- man, justly eminent, as well for professional attain- ury, In 1814 he became Attorney-General of the ments as in other departments of mental culture. He United States, which position he also held for three years. He was temporary Secretary of State in 1517, and was minister from the United States to England from 1817 to 1825. In the latter year he was recalled by President Adams, who made him secretary of the Treasury. He was candidate for Vice-President of the United States in 1828, upon the same ticket with President John Quincy Adams. Both were defeated. He was sent to England in 1836, by President Jack- son, to obtain the Smith- sonian legacy of over a half-million dollars. Ilis last public service was as minister to France, trom 1847 to 1851. lle died at Sydenham, his country- seat, near Philadelphia, July 30, 1859. was a native of the Isle of Rhé, on the west coast of France; came to America, when seventeen years of age, as secretary and aide-de-camp of Baron Steuben. In February, 1778, he was appointed brevet captain, and assisted Steuben in his efforts to introduce dis- cipline in the American army. He left the army in 1780, became secretary of Robert M. Living- stone, head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, in October, 1781, and left that post in May, 1783. He then studied law, and was admitted to the bar June 24, 1785. He be- came eminent in the pro- fession, particularly in the branches of civil law and foreign law, as well as in constitutional law, under the States and United States. As a linguist and philologist he was pro- found. In literature, sci- ence, and philosophy he was equally learned. He died April 2, 1844.

Joseph Hopkinson, ad- mitted May 4, 1791, was a son of Judge Francis Hop- kinson. Joseph was born Nov. 12, 1778. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar. After his admis- sion he practiced a short time at Easton, but soon returned to Philadelphia. He was counsel for Dr. Rush in the suit against Cobbett in 1799, and appeared for the Northampton insurgents before Judge Chase in 1800. He was a member of Congress from 1816 till 1820. Hle resided in New Jersey, 1820-23; then returned to Philadel- phia, resumed practice, and was appointed judge of the United States;District Court in 1828, and held that position until his death, in 1842. He was a leading member of the Convention to revise the Constitution of Pennsylvania in 1837. As the author of the song, "Hail, Columbia!" his name is known throughout the country.

Richard Rush, a man of excellent parts, would have become a great lawyer but for his fondness for politics, in which the greater part of his life was spent. His defense of Duane when the latter was

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Thomas Cadwalader, admitted in December, 1801, attained a very re- spectable practice, par- ticularly valuable in the management of the estates of the Penn family. He was well known throngh his connection with the military, having been eap- tain of cavalry, after- ward lieutenant-colonel of a regiment of cavalry, brigadier general during the war with Great Brit- ain, and subsequently was major-general of the First Division. Ile died Oct. 26, 1841. He was the son of Gen. John Cadwalader of the Revolution, and the father of John and George Cadwalader, the first of whom was for many years judge of the United States District Court, while the second was brigadier-general and major-general in the army of the United States during the war with Mexico and with the Southern States during the war of the Rebellion.

Among that body of lawyers was one who comtrib- nted, perhaps, as much as any other to the Enjoy- ments of lawyers and judges, who are all ; ntlerien, and who have, more perhaps than any other profes- sion, a keen sense of the humorous. This was a Ilebrew.

Sampson Levy was born in 1761 A mind quite limited in its grasp, compared with those of the

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

great men with whom he associated upon terms of equality, deficient in the knowledge of legal prinei- ples, never having been a student of any sort, yet by activity, wit and humor, and a certain sort of audacity that was offensive to nobody, he was enabled to rise into comparatively fine practice, and hold his own in some sort of fashion, with the best, and become one of the favorites among the bar. The absurdities that he often committed did him, it appears, more service than harm, and his unlimited volume of speech made him seem to many jnries and outside listeners one of the most eloquent men of his day. There is no man of the Philadelphia bar of whom the anecdotes that have been preserved are so abundant with raci- ness. He frequently succeeded in his causes by means which could perhaps have occurred to none other than himself, the peculiarity of which con- tributed to make him the most interesting man of the time. Judge Washington onee said of him that " he was the most troublesome speaker at the bar, as in beating every bush, in sporting phrase, he sometimes started game which he almost immediately left for the judge to hunt down." He died in 1831.

Sergeant is another of the names destined to be made and continued illustrious in the bar of Phila- delphia. Jonathau Dickinson Sergeant, who was ad- mitted to the bar in September, 1777, was born at Princeton, N. J., in 1746. He was educated at Princeton College, studied law with Richard Stock- ton, and was admitted to the bar of New Jersey, where he practiced for some years. He was a dele- gate from New Jersey in Congress during a portion of 1776-77. Iu July of the latter year he was ap- pointed attorney-general for the State of Pennsyl- vania. He was selected, together with Mr. Patter- son, attorney-general of New Jersey, as law counselor, to assist the judge advocate upon the court-martial of Gen. St. Clair, on account of the evacuation of Ti- conderoga in 1778. He was counsel for the State of Pennsylvania in the controversy with the State of Connectieut, concerning the Wyoming lands, in 1782. He resigned the attorney-generalship in 1780, and was in practice until 1793, when, being upon the committee of health during the yellow fever visita- tion, he took the infection, and died in the month of October of that year.

Thomas Sergeant, born in Philadelphia, Jan. 14, 1782, was admitted to the bar on June 8, 1802. He was clerk of the Mayor's Court of the city from April 22, 1806, to May 10, 1809. After he left the bench of the District Court he was appointed secretary of the com- monwealth, Dec. 16, 1817, and resigned on the 6th of July, 1819. In the same year he became attorney- general of Pennsylvania, and held the office for one year, being succeeded by Thomas Elder. He was postmaster of the eity from 1828 to 1833, appointed justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania Feb. 3, 1834, and held that office until 1846, when he re- signed. He died May 8, 1860. Judge Mitchell says

of Thomas Sergeant: " In person he was singularly unlike his distinguished brother John, but though not possessing the same brilliant forensic qualities, he was fully equal to his brother in soundness of judg- ment and depth of learning." It may be added that the brothers were unlike in appearance as well as in stature. John Sergeant was a small, dapper man, who was very particular as to his dress and appear- ance, while Thomas Sergeant was careless and slouchy, wearing awkwardly-cut clothes, and being sometimes seen in the public streets with a colored bandanna handkerchief tied around his neck.

The most distinguished member of the family, how- ever, was John Sergeant, who was born in this city in 1779. He was the son of Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant, and was educated in the schools of the University until the spring of 1794, when he went to Princeton College and graduated in September, 1795. After leaving college he entered the counting-house of Messrs. Ellison and John Perot, but afterward changed his intentions and entered in March, 1797, the office of Jared Ingersoll, and commenced the study of the law. In July, 1799, before reaching the age of twenty, he was admitted to the bar. His advance in the profession was rapid, and in 1800 he was ap- pointed to prosecute for the commonwealth in Chester County, and during that and subsequent years prose- cuted also in Philadelphia. In 1802 he was appointed by Mr. Jefferson, commissioner of bankruptcy, and in 1805, he was elected a member of the House of Representatives.

Having deelined a re-election in 1806, he was again elected in 1807 to the Legislature. During 1807 and 1808 he was chairman of the Committee on Roads and Inland Navigation, and in that capacity reported the first act giving the direct aid of the State to internal improvements, a cause which he had deeply at heart, and to which he never refused his assistance. The amount appropriated was nearly two hundred thousand dollars, which was applied to the construc- tion of turnpike roads. At the same session he intro- duced a bill, which was passed, prohibiting masquer- ades, which he considered dangerous to public morals, the eare of which he never lost sight of.

In 1815 he was elected to Congress by the district composed of the city and county of Philadelphia and county of Delaware, and was elected from the same district to the three following Congresses, the last time in 1820, without opposition, and at the end of the term he declined a re-election and devoted him- self again exclusively to his profession.

Mr. Sergeant took his seat in Congress at an inter- esting period. It was the first session after the close of the war of 1812. He gave from the beginning his earnest, active, and efficient support to the bill framed by the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Dallas, and recommended by Mr. Madison, for the relief of the finances of the country. Another topic of vast im- portance during his early career in Congress, in rela-

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tion to which he rendered distinguished service, was what has since been known as the Missouri question. On the 9th of February, 1820, he delivered one of the best reasoned and most able speeches that had ever been heard in the hall of either House of Congress. His efforts were also directed to promote the establislı- ment of a bankrupt law which he had deeply at heart.

Mr. Sergeant, by the faithful discharge of his duties and the conscientious adherence to his principles, earned that distinction which gave him a national reputation ; and the influence which he acquired in Congress may be illustrated by the fact that on one occasion, when a bill for the establishment of a lottery had been introduced, he, by a few words, not only defeated the bill itself, but so effectually awakened the feelings of the House that they ordered a com- mittee to bring in a bill to prohibit the sale of lottery tickets in the District of Columbia.

Active as he was on the higher and more general questions which were presented, he never neglected those which were locally important to his constituents. The bills for construeting the Breakwater, for the eree- tion of a new mint, and the Chesapeake and Del- aware Canal, afford a few of many instances be served the districts be represented.

In 1826 he was appoint- ed by the President minis- ter from the United States to what was commonly called the Congress of Panama. In 1832 he was taken np as the Whig can- didate for Vice- President.

John Sergeant.

In 1836 he was elected a member of the Constitu- tional Convention, and on its assembling, in 1837, was chosen president. In 1840 he was again elected to Congress, from which he retired in 1841.

On Gen. Harrison's election, he was tendered a place in the cabinet, and shortly afterward declined the appointment of minister to Great Britain.

His last publie official function was discharged in 1847, when he was selected on the part of the United States as an arbitrator to determine the controversy then existing between the United States and Dela- ware as to the title of the Peapatch Island, and which was definitely settled by his award.

dent of that board until the period of his departure to Mexico.

He acted as president of the House ut Refuge from the date of its establishment; was also president of the Apprentices' Library, and for many years there was in the city no meeting of importance to which he did not attend. During this period he was engage l in a laborious profession.

In the cause of charity he was never appealed to in vain. He was connected with many of our charitable institutions, and in some of them took a more active part than might have been thought consistent with his various publie and professional occupations.

Through life he fulfilled all public functions faith- fully, sought none unworthily. By his inflexible in- tegrity, not less by his emi- nent ability, he added lus- tre to Pennsylvania, and richly earned the lionors which are now paid to his memory.

We have spoken sev- eral times before of the elevated tone of the bench and of the bar of Phila- delphia. There never was a bar at which chicanery and pretension had less opportunities for success- ful practice. Already old was the canon that a law- yer, to be respected, it he had not great abili- ties and great learning, must at least be a gentle- man. It is a canon that ever has been adhered to, and no bar in any State in the Union can count a larger number of men who adhered to it with constant, cheer- ful fidelity throughout life. All who remember Mr. Sergeant remember him with a regard that is made up both of profound respect and a feeling like affection. Great as he was, he never parted from the modesty and simplicity he had as a child. Not such an orator as Ingersoll or Lewis, he yet approximated the former in persuasiveness. He was not only thor- oughly honest in condnet, but his very language before juries had the sound of honesty to a degree that was irresistibly persuasive. It was said of him once that without the consciousness of it he had the art of getting himself into the jury-box, and there take a part with his fellow-jurors in deciding upon his case. We know how nnalterably upright he was when we are told that on the prospect of the failure

He was appointed one of the Board of Canal Com- missioners under the act of 1825, and was the presi- of the Schuylkill Navigation Company, when it was

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

proposed to him to sell out his stock in time to pre- vent disaster, he answered, "No. I have launched my fortune in the same boat with others, many of whom have relied upon my opinion and my example as to the probable safety of the investment. There are many that can bear the loss less than I can, but whether or not, I will not shrink from the common peril, and save my money at the expense of others, as well as of my own character. If they lose, I will lose, and then no man can question the honesty and sincerity of my motive. Not a share of mine shall be sold." When such qualities belong to a man of great abilities and favorable opportunities, it is im- possible to properly estimate his value to his gener- ation. The eulogy of Mr. Sergeant by his great rival, is one of the very best of its kind in any lan- guage. The following brief extracts are so fine that we cannot fail to give them, wishing we had space for more : " Whatever he studied, he knew well, and when he left the office (or going thence to the bar) he was as accomplished a student as was ever ad- mitted to the bar. I have seen his great powers in their bud,-you have seen them in their bloom. It was the flower more fully developed, but having from the strength of my first impression, no more fresh- ness or beauty to me, at avy hour, than when I saw it at its opening." "In addition to great quickness, grasp of thought, and power of comprehension, he derived through an excellent education the art of arranging his argument with perfect skill, according to the rules of the most finished and effective logic, and he was able to penetrate the want of it in any- body that was opposed to him." . .. "He marched to his conclusions by a path or paths that he was willing to let everybody trace and examine, after he had completed the passage,-and it was not safe for any man to do otherwise with him." . . . "He did not like to read for the purpose of thinking,-he thought for the purpose of reading, to corroborate or to rectify his thoughts. It was his striking way, and while sometimes it exposed him to inconvenience, at other times it gave him a sort of electric power that was altogether marvelous." He died in 1852.

William Sergeant, son of Hon. John Sergeant, was born in Philadelphia in 1829, and graduated at Princeton College in 1847. He studied law under Benjamin Gerhard, and was admitted to the bar in 1850. He held a prominent position at the bar, and was for a time a member of the Legislature. On the breaking out of the war he received a captaincy in the Twelfth United States Infantry, and was noticed for his gallantry in the Peninsular and the other cam- paigns in which he participated. He was afterward commissioned as colonel of the Two Hundred and Tenth Pennsylvania Volunteers. On the 31st of March, 1865, he was wounded by a ball in his thigh while resisting a desperate attack on the White Oak road near the Boynton Plank-road, in front of Peters- burg, Va., from which he died on board of the hospital

steamboat "Connecticut," while on his way home, April 11, 1865. Col. Sergeant was an amiable, ac- complished, and warm-hearted gentleman, a writer of marked ability, and a gallant officer.

Benjamin Gerhard, by marriage connected with this family, was born at Philadelphia in 1812, and received a preliminary education at the school of Professor Espy. He graduated at Dickinson College in 1828, and studied law under Joseph R. Ingersoll, and was admitted to the bar in 1832. He married a daughter of John Sergeant, and was a trustee of the Gas Works for many years, member of City Council, trustee of the University of Pennsylvania ; a mem- ber of the Protestant Episcopal Academy ; a vestry- man of St. James' Church ; a member of the Ameri- can Philosophical and Historical Societies, and of the Episcopal Corporation for Widows. During the early part of the late civil war he was appointed provost-marshal of the city to superintend the draft, and performed the duties without compensation. He was one of the founders and an officer of the Union League. He died June 18, 1864. He was an accom- plished lawyer and a perfect master of the legal science, and edited "Starkie on Evidence," " Wil- liams on Personal Property," and other text-books. In addition to his accomplishments as a lawyer, he possessed an extensive general education. The char- acter of Mr. Gerhard was one of purity and candor ; his anxiety about the affairs of the nation was intense, and he became a martyr to the cause to which the latter years of his life were given, and for which he gladly would have died.

One of John Sergeant's students is still prac- ticing law at the bar of Philadelphia, and is one of its most distinguished citizens. Eli K. Price was born on the 20th of July, 1797, in Chester County, Pa., within a short distance from the spot where the battle of the Brandywine was fought. He is the third son of Philip and Rachel Price, the father being the fifth in the line of lineal descent from Philip Price, who came into Pennsylvania with the Welsh settlers, who, in 1682, took up Merion, Haverford, and Radnor townships, Chester Co., and subsequently overspread into Newtown, Goshen, and Uwchlan townships.

The early education of Eli K. Price was obtained at Friends' Western School, in the county in which he was born. The first inclination of Mr. Price, when nearing his majority, was in the line of commercial life, and he entered the shipping-house of Thomas P. Cope, in Philadelphia, with a view to definite em- barkation upon mercantile pursuits. He had ever been an industrious student and a comprehensive reader, and it was not long before he concluded that a professional life was more in accord with his tastes. He accordingly entered the law-office of John Ser- geant, where he applied himself with his wonted diligence to the mastering of legal problems. He I was admitted to the Philadelphia bar on the 28th of

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

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THE BENCH AND BAR.

May, 1822, and is now its senior member in actual practice.

Early in his professional career Mr. Price evinced great aptitude in the principles and practice of law. He speedily attained a very high position in his profession, and to-day he stands, with two or three other eminent jurists, at the head of the bar of this city. Pursuing the course usually followed by successful practitioners, his inclination and readings led him toward a specialty in civil practice,-the law of real estate. He has long held the proud position of being the leading authority upon the law relating to real property at the bar. The well-known act of Assembly of April 18, 1853, entitled “ An Act relating to the sale and conveyance of real estate," popularly known by all lawyers as the "Price Act," is his handiwork, and in 1874 he published an ad- mirable treatise upon the act in question, which contains much valuable historical and technical in- formation. He has published other legal works, chief among which is the "Law of Limitation and Liens against Real Estate."

Not only has Mr. Price attained deserved dis- tinction within the sphere of his profession, but he has also served with honor in a number of important public positions. He represented Philadelphia in the State Revenue Boards of 1845 and 1848, and was a member of the State Senate in 1854-56. To the latter office he was chosen over the regular candidates of the two political parties then existing. He had been especially selected as a candidate by many rep- resentative residents of the county of Philadelphia, with a view to having a diligent effort made looking toward the union of the several townships, boroughs, and districts of the county, to the corporate limits of the city of Philadelphia. It was chiefly through his energy that the charter of Feb. 2, 1854, known as the "Consolidation Act," was granted. The history of the movements looking to and following the consolida- tion was written and published by him, in 1873, in a volume of one hundred and thirty-seven pages. During his senatorial term of three years, many im- portant statutes were passed, which had been drafted by him. Except his membership of the State Revenue Board and the State Senate, he has held no public office save that of a member of the Park Commission, upon which he has served since its organization, in 1867, to the present time.

Besides devoting his energies in the line of his profession, and in the incumbency of the offices mentioned, he has found time to give considerable attention to matters educational, scientific, and his- torical. He is at present a member of the board of trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, president of the board of managers of the University Hospital, vice-president of the American Philosophieal Society, president of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society, etc. In the successful operation of each of these institutions he takes a very active interest.

Throughout his varied and well-spent career, al- though apparently overburdened with the compre- hensiveness of his pursuits and their laborious de- mands, he has found opportunity to prepare for pub- lication a great variety of rich material upon many phases of political, social, and moral economy. In addition to the legal works already mentioned, and the "History of the Consolidation," he has pre- pared treatises upon the following subjects, which were read before the Philosophical Society, and sub- sequently published : "The Trial by Jury" |1863 , "The Family as an Element of Government" (1864 . "Some Phases of Modern Philosophy" (1872 , " The Glacial Epochs" (1876), "Sylviculture" |1877), and "The Rockery at the University of Pennsylvania" (1881). All of these treatises display rare intellectual power, extensive research, and recondite literary intui- tion. Besides these public writings, he has prepared two other volumes, printed for private circulation, which evince equally as strong and commendable, though different phases of, head and heart power, namely, a memoir of his father and mother, Philip and Rachel Price, written with true filial reverence and delicacy, and a monograph containing a sketch of the life of a daughter, penned with affectionate yet dispassionate devotion. He is still much given to literary pursuits, although now [1884] eighty-seven years of age. The subjects which of late have en- grossed his attention tend less toward the divers realms of practical ethics and abstract metaphysics than toward religious and spiritual themes.

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History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 159

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 992

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992