History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 74

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As there is no list of the early practitioners at the Westmoreland bar extant, we have gathered together all that we could find, some appearing and conduct- ing suits the evidence of whose admission is not ac- cessible. We have taken the names from the old ap- pearance dockets in the office of the prothonotary and

1 From sketch by William H. Egle, M.D., in Penn. Hist. Magazine.

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out of the minutes of the Quarter Sessions Court. We give the dates of admission when so stated, and other- wise the terms at which we find their first appearance respectively, although these dates do not invariably correspond with the dates of admission. Sometimes. indeed, attorneys from neighboring counties were ad- mitted, on motion, at several successive terms.

FIRST REGULAR ATTORNEYS.

The first regular attorney whose admission at this bar is noticed is Francis Dade, who was admitted on Aug. 3, 1773. In the April term of 1774 we find the names of Espy, Irwin (written, properly, Erwin), Smiley, Galbraith, and .Wilson; in October term, 1774, Megraw, and sometimes St. Clair, conducts cases. Mr. Wilson makes the motions of record in the Quarter Sessions during 1773. At the January sessions of 1779, on motion of David Sample, himself of course a practitioner, Samuel Erwin was admitted to practice. Sample was State's attorney in 1779. Michael Huffnagle was admitted in 1779, on motion of David Sempie. The only observation touching the professional career of this very prominent citi- zen which we have yet come across is contained in a letter from St. Clair to President Reed, dated March 26, 1781. On the consideration of the bill to erect Washington County, Gen. St. Clair recommended Huffnagle to the office of prothonotary, as " a young gentleman now in the practice of the law in West- moreland," and who, he said, was a man of probity, and capable of filling the office with propriety. He had served a regular apprenticeship (the old word used around the temple) to Mr. Shippen, of Lancaster, and had come to St. Clair strongly recommended. He had worked in the office with Brison and as pri- vate clerk to St. Clair for a number of years, and during the time he served him (so the general con- tinues) he gave satisfaction not only to him, but very generally to everybody who had business at the office.

In the April sessions of 1780, Robert Galbraith and Thomas Smith were admitted. At January term, 1785, Ross and Young appear ; at April term, Scott; and at October term, Thompson. Ross and Woods mostly appear together, they being located at Pitts- burgh at that time. Hugh Henry Brackenridge, afterwards a justice of the Supreme Court of Penn- sylvania, was admitted at a court held before Edward Cook on the second Tuesday of April, 1781, on mo- tion of Mr. Smith. On the same day James Berwick was also admitted and sworn. In the January ses- sions of 1782, James Hamilton was admitted; in the January sessions of 1783, Thomas Duncan and George Thompson ; in 1784, John Woods. On the second Tuesday of April, 1782, on motion of Brackenridge, Mr. David Bradford was admitted an attorney at this court, he having read under Mr. Chaw, of Maryland. This man was afterwards the head and front of the Whiskey Insurrection, and died, self-expatriated, a

wealthy planter on the lower Mississippi, after having made his name both famous and infamous.1

These attorneys were among the first, and they prac- ticed while yet the courts were held at Hannastown, and before the removal of the county-seat, about 1785. Of these, Andrew Roes, Magraw, Galbraith, David Sample, James Wilson, and Epay were lawyers be- longing to the Bedford County bar. James Rows and Bradford were first of the Washington County bar, although Roes afterwards removed to Pittsburgh. Brackenridge had located at Pittsburgh in 1781.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY PRACTICE.

There were, therefore, in the early days no regular resident lawyers while yet Hannastown was the county-seat, and the bar was made up when the court came together. The practice which a regular professional lawyer might have acquired would not have been a profitable one. His pay for the most part would have been in truck (quid pro quo), such as turkey, venison, cordwood, and pelts. The eminent jurist, Hugh H. Brackenridge, when a young attorney, received for his retainer in defending the Indian Mamachtags, hung at Hannastown for murder, a quantity of beaver-skins. From the fact of there having been so few resident attorneys at Hannastown has, in all probability, arisen the delusion, still cher- ished by the oldest settlers, that the "Hannastown Age" was the golden age, vainly, vainly hoped for by mortals to come again. The lawyers then followed in the train of the itinerant justices of the State (and afterwards with the president judges of the Common Pleas) when they came out on their circuits. It is said that when court was opened many of these awaited at the steps of the court-house for clients, and their appearance was frequently entered on the day of the trial. The bench and the bar-judges, clerks, and lawyers-traveled together on horseback. Some of these early practitioners who thus came out at first as the country progressed settled at different county-seats in Western Pennsylvania. Westmore- land embraced Pittsburgh till 1788, and there were resident lawyers there as early as 1781, and in 1786 there were three,-Brackenridge, Ross, and Woods. These had to come to Hannastown and Greensburg before Allegheny County was erected, and when that event occurred there was already the nucleus of a bar gathered around Robert Hanna's house, which ever since its organization has held a distinguished place among the bars of the Commonwealth.

The appearance of the court, such as it was, at Hannastown, when the justices opened their commis-

1 Bradford was a Marylander, having come into Washington County while it was under the Virginia regime, and represented one of its coun- ties in the Legislature of that Commonwealth. He was a brother-in-law of Judge James Allison (grandfather of Hon. John Allison, late register of United States Treasury), and of Judge Charles Porter, of Fayette. A granddaughter became the wife of Richard Brodhead, United States son- atur from Pennsylvania, 1851-67, and a con is said to have married a sister of Jefferson Davis .- Veech in Contenary Memorial.

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sions, was not such, we may imagine, as would con- duce to the dignity of county trials. The judges sat on common hickory chairs, raised by way of eminence on a clapboard bench. As the room was small there was no separate place either for the bar or the people, but all sat promiscuously together. So, from the same inconvenience, they sometimes filled the jail building so full with prisoners that they had either to let some go without serving an imprisonment, or else make them pay up in the pillory or at the post.1 As all the officers of the court were ordinarily well known to most of the citizens, part of that dignity which a.separate profession brings was necessarily lest. But, on the other hand, when the chief justice came round and took his seat in the Criminal Court, his dignified demeanor and his scarlet robe commanded a rever- ence which was wanting in the county sessions. In many instances those rough parties, with bullying propensities, resisted the hand of the constables un- der the eyes of the county judges. "Give him a fair chance and clear him of the law, and he would lick any of them." To such it was necessary, as in the instance mentioned by Brackenridge,' to call in the posse comitatus, the power of the county, to carry him to the nearest stable or pig-pen, so that he was kept in custody till the dignity of the law was fully recog- nized.

The principal part of the early law business was of a civil nature, or of such ordinary transactions as arise between man and man, and which, by far, are the most numerous of causes arising among citizens. Our ancestors were not, in the sense we form the idea, a litigious people. If one had committed an offense against the peace he was apprehended on the warrant of a justice and taken to the county jail, If he could get bail he was, of course, bailed out. When the sessions met and he had been convicted of a larceny or house-breaking, the punishment was summary. He was taken out of the court-house, so called, and flogged, or compelled to stand in the pillory. As the fines belonged, in part, to the revenue, these pecuniary fines laid upon offenders amounted, in the relative value of money, to a considerable sum, and they were exacted in nearly every instance. But if he had no money and no means of getting any, he had to make up for his fine by so many stripes, the precise value of which severally, without inquiring minutely, we are unable to state. As the jail or prison-house was often insufficient for all offenders, it became absolutely necessary, when it was full, for a general delivery. Nor would it have been in Christian keeping to have let them loose without some special mark put upon them to remind them, and all, of the power of the justices and of the inflexibility of justice. It was not always that the jail held those that were taken,

and it was not always that an offender could be taken. It was no difficult matter for one of the mountaineers to evade, nay, to resist, the officers. In some districts process of law could not be served.

Thus, even after law was established, from the necessity of the thing there had arisen a kind of un- written law, which obtained with all the force of written law, and of which one may find, if he is curi- ous to discover, traces at this day. The status of a people who commence colonies in a civilized State and age is different from the status of those who, by slow and almost imperceptible advances, have arisen out of original barbarism by their own developments. This is logically and elegantly put by Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations," and we advert to it here as fitting. And, indeed, had there been no law com- manding this and forbidding that, yet would these very colonists have been guided by certain and in- variable customs as easily determinable as any written obligation. Our early court-rolls are not encumbered- with long criminal calenders. In proportion to the ordinary civil cases, affrays, riots, sureties of the peace, assaults and batteries, and such like misde- meanors are, in comparison, few. Even in such a state we have no evidences of the compounding of felonies; nay, literally there was more "pounding" than compounding.

H. H. BRACKENRIDGE.

Hugh Henry Brackenridge fills such a large space in our history that we shall meet with his name and have occasion to make observations upon some of his actions in various as well as numerous instances. We shall advert to him in his character of. lawyer and individual.'

Judge Brackenridge was indeed an extraordinary man, and differed much in many things from other men. Nature had done everything for him, and yet he labored as if she had done nothing. His person, voice, and manner would have rendered him a star of the first order on the stage. His eye, his glance, the

" HUGE HENRY BRACKENRIDGE .- Hugh H. Brackenridge wes a native of Scotland, born in Campbelton in 1748. At the age of five he came with his father to Pennsylvania. He became a tutor at Princeton, having graduated at that college in 1771, and was master of an academy in Maryland when the Revolution broke out. Ho removed to Philadel- phia, and having studied divinity became a chaplain in the army. Re- linquishing the pulpit for the bar, be edited for a time the United States Magarine. In 1781 be settled at Pittsburgh. In 1786 he was sent to the Legislature to attain the establishment of the county of Allegheny. Was made a judge in 1789, when he was appointed to the vacancy caused by the election of Mckean Governor, and from 1799 until his death was judge of the Supreme Court of the State. The part he took in the Whiskey Insurrection made him prominent. He vindicated his course in that affair in his " History of the Whiskey Insurrection," published the year after. Washington, Hamilton, and Mimiin well understood his position. He published a poem on the " Rising Glory of Amarion," 1774; "Eulogium on the Brave who fell in the Contest with Great Britain," delivered at Philadelphia, July 4, 1779; " Modern Chivalry, or the Ad- ventures of Capt. Farrago," 1796, an admirable satire; "Oration," July 4, 1793: "Gazette Publications Collected, " 1806. He died at Carlisle on the 25th of June, 1816 (Archives, Second Series, vol. iv., d' seg.). The culogium may be found in Niles' " Register."

1 A common saying, "from post to pillar," is a corruption traceable to this original.

" " Recollections," by H. M. Brackenridge.

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sound of his voice would sometimes make the blood run cold in the veins. His mind was of the highest poetic order, but of the most astonishing versatility.' He could at perfect command excite a tragic horror or occasion peals of laughter, but he seldom at- tempted the pathetic. His imagination ascended the highest heaven of invention. When he began to speak he frequently labored under great embarrass- ment. He has thus been compared to an eagle rising from level ground, but as he proceeded he rose by degrees, and when he poured himself upon his career he seemed to range through heaven, earth, and sea.' Some of his flights were as wonderful as those of .Bourdaloue or Curran. The fame of his wonderful powers is confined to the few who witnessed them, and to a feeble tradition. It was his misfortune to display his talents on an obscure and circumscribed theatre, and on subjects seldom fitted to call them forth.

But fortunately for us we still have as a blessed heritage his contributions to the literature of Western Pennsylvania,-contributions of value untold, and which are growing more precious day by day. In his occasional contributions to the periodicals of his day we have preserved many facts which are now the cap- ital stock of the provincial annalist, while the arti- cles which, as a young man, for his amusement he submitted for publication are, as it were, brands snatched out of the fire. In them are sentences here and there which the future historian will seize upon as texts and quote as authority. But his " Modern Chivalry" is undoubtedly one of the happiest hits ever made in that range of American literature. It not only exposes with a keen wit the abuses of our popular form of government, but it preserves many of the customs, provincialisms, and manners of the people of that day and generation. The.most prom- inent and notorious of the political and religious characters of Southwestern Pennsylvania are therein caricatured. Thus Findley, our member of Congress, appears as Traddle; James Ross and Woods as Valen- tine and Orson; many of the expressions Capt. Far- rago uses are merely the expressions and the opinions of Brackenridge himself, and doubtless in almost every chief character therein delineated he intended to, and actually did, portray or make allusion to some prominent actor in the farce of the Whiskey Insur- rection, if we only had the clew to find it out.

As to his style, it is pleasing, and his writings abound with apt allusions to the history, poetry, and mythology of the ancients. He excelled in repartee, and a shadow of regret cannot but pass along when we think how many brilliant jests, pathetic appeals, and ornate sentences were lost among the brown rafters of Robert Hanna's rickety log cabin.

1 The poet Bruce, of Washington County, thus describes him: "In an auld bigging dwalt a starling Wha was o' ilka bird the darling."

" " Per omnes terrasque, tractumaque maris, coclumque profundum."

The personal habits and individual characteristics of distinguished men are always matters of curiosity and interest. Some of these characteristics in Brack- enridge were marked. He never dined out or invited to dinner, and was unwilling to see company until after tea. This, therefore, was the time for persons to drop in to hear his conversation. In this none ex- celled him ; although during the day it was difficult to get him to say a word, except on business. It was a treat to hear him speak when he chose to unbend. He could relate a story where the illusion was so per- fect that the hearer would suppose there were half a dozen characters on the stage. The famous Jeffrey, in one of the numbers of the Edinburgh Review, says that Matthews, the English comedian, was inferior to him in relating a story ; and of all men competent to judge, Jeffrey was perhaps the most competent.' He generally walked about as he conversed, and like- wise when he was speaking he was constantly moving himself. It has been remarked that what he said on the bench while beated had nothing of his usual elo- quence, and when he was eloquent there, which was but seldom, he rose upon his feet.

JAMES ROSS.

We regard ourselves fortunate in having access to the personal recollections of a lawyer of Western Pennsylvania, one of the principal practitioners at the bar at an early day and a judge of no mean reputa- tion. Of these recollections and of his observations therein we shall, so far as they refer to our subject, make full. use.

Judge H. M. Brackenridge, son of H. H. Bracken- ridge, or the "old" judge, the lawyer to whom we refer, in his " Recollections of the West" says that Mr. James Roes was at that time-the beginning of the present century-decidedly at the head of the West- ern bar." His reputation was, however, not confined to the town of Pittsburgh or State of Pennsylvania. He had occupied the point of display on the largest theatre America affords, the Senate of the United States, and there he had ranked as the equal of Bay- ard, Gouverneur Morris, and Giles. He had a large

" See " Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle," by Froude.

" JAMES Boss was a Pennsylvanian, born in York County, July 18, 1762. He was educated at Peques, under Rev. Dr. Robert Smith, and taught at Cannonsburg. He studied law in Philadelphia, and was admitted to the bar in 1784. He was a member of the Constitutional Con- vention of 1790, and an able defender of the Federal Constitution. H. was United States senator from 1784 to 1803, and a commissioner of the United States to the Western insurgents. He died at Pittsburgh, Nov. 27, 1847. He published "Speech on the Free Navigation of the Mississippi," 1803.

THOMAS SMITH, one of the early practitioners at Hannastown, wM . native of Scotland. He emigrated to America at an early age; was a lawyer by profession. He was appointed deputy surveyor Feb. 9, 1769, and established himself at Bedford. He was prothonotary, clerk of the sessions, and recorder of Bedford County, colonel of the militia in the Revolution, member of the Convention of 1776, member of the State Legislature, member of the Old Congress, 1780-82, president judge of the judicial district of Cumberland, Mimin, Huntingdon, Bedford, and Franklin Counties, 1791-84, judge of the Supreme Courtof Pennsylvania, 1794 to 1809. He died at Bedford June, 1809,-Arch., N. 8., iv.

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and noble frame, and a head of Homerian cast, indi- cating his capacious mind. His voice was clear and full, while his thoughts and action flowed in a ma- jestic stream. He was remarkable for the clear and perspicuous manner of treating his subject, and he possessed a perfect command over his hearers by the self-possession which he always displayed. Sometimes he would thunder, sometimes indulge in a vein of pleasantry, but he must be classed among those prod- igies of mind who, like Webster and the orators of a later day, bent the will of men by appealing to their reason, and who instruct where they do not convince by the depth of their thought and the extent of their knowledge. He never tripped or appeared at a loss for an expression. Every sentence might be written down as it was spoken, the result probably of careful preparation at first, which became a second nature.

JOHN WOODS.

The reputation of Mr. Woods as a skillful lawyer was also high. His person was fine, and his dress and manner bespoke the gentleman, although there was a touch of aristocratic pride about him which lessened his popularity. His voice was rather shrill and un- pleasant, especially when contrasted with his manly appearance, but, like John Randolph, his ear-piercing voice often gave effect to a powerful invective. Few lawyers could manage a case with more skill. He was deeply versed in the subtilties of the law of ten- ures and ejectment causes. Being possessed of a handsome fortune, he rather shunned than courted practice, but in a difficult case the suitor thought himself fortunate when he could secure his assistance.

STEEL SEMPLE.

But the great favorite of the younger members of the bar was Steel Semple, who ought to be considered at the head of the corps of regular practitioners. In stature he was a giant of "mighty bone," and pos- sessed a mind cast in as mighty a mould. Personally he was timid and sluggish. As a speaker his diction was elegant, sparkling, and classical. His wit was genuine. He was at the same time a prodigy of mem- ory, a gift imparted to him in kindness to supply the want of industry, although it is not every indolent man who is thus favored. Mr. Sample was conversant with all the polite and fashionable literature of the day, and was more of a modern than his distinguished competitors. It is no less strange than true that for the few first years of his appearance at the bar his success was very doubtful. His awkward manner, his hesitation and stammering, his indolent habits occa- sioned many to think that he had mistaken his voca- tion. Judge Brackenridge, the elder, was almost the only person who saw his future eminence. He was unfortunately carried off when he had just risen to distinction. He fell a victim to that vice which un- happily has too often overtaken the most distinguished in every profession. He died when a little turned of

forty. His fame had not traveled far from the dis- play of his powers, which is usually the case in pro- fessions which must be seen and felt to be appreciated.

HENRY BALDWIN AND WILLIAM WILKINS.

Two younger members of the bar were at that time rapidly rising and taking the lead in the practice of the court at Allegheny, and each of these had a re- spectable clientage in Westmoreland as long as they continued to practice here. They were Mr. Henry Baldwin and Mr. William Wilkins, the first afterwards distinguished as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the other as a politician, a member of Congress, a cabinet officer, and a foreign minister. The first appearance of both these gentlemen was at- tended with brilliant success, although they were en- tirely unlike each other. Mr. Baldwin was a deeply- read lawyer and an excellent scholar, but in his person and manner remarkably plain and unstudied. He was a warm, rapid, and cogent speaker, at the same time close, logical, and subtile. He invariably exhausted his subject, but studiously avoided all orna- ment or unnecessary verbiage. He entered at once in medias res, and ended without peroration when he had nothing more to say. Mr. Wilkins was more than genteel in his person ; his features were cast in the Roman mould, and his drees always neat and even elegant. His manner was excellent, his voice and enunciation clear and distinct. He was diffuse in his speeches, and wanted method, argument, and depth of philosophical acumen; but he knew those whom he addressed, as the musician knows the instrument he touches. He was, therefore, a successful and a justly popular advocate.

LEGAL ABILITY OF THE EARLY BAR.

With knowledge of these one should, therefore, greatly err if he should measure the standard of pro- fessional ability of the lawyers who then traveled on the circuit and pleaded in these backwoods and the justices of the Supreme Court of that day who came out with them to deliver the jails, with the standard of professional ability of these attorneys who pleaded before the county justices and with the county justices themselves. At no time in the history of the Penn- sylvania bar has the professional ability of those regular lawyers been rated higher than it is now. With St. Clair for prothonotary in a court in which Brackenridge, Espy, Ross, and Smith pleaded before Mckean and Yeates there might have been, as there were, some lawyers of mediocre talent and attainmenta, but they were not all of mediocre talent and attain- ments.

At that day, and much later, the attention of the student was chiefly directed to the law of terms and the books of reports. The course of study embraced the more abstruse branches of the profession, such as ' are almost obsolete at the present day, and perhaps required a more intense strain upon the reasoning

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History of the County of Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 74

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor Publication date: Publisher: Number of Pages:

Author: George Dallas Albert, editor
Publication date:
Publisher:
Number of Pages: