The twentieth century bench and bar of Pennsylvania, volume I, Part 15

Author:
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Chicago, H. C. Cooper, jr., bro. & co.
Number of Pages: 1102

USA > Pennsylvania > The twentieth century bench and bar of Pennsylvania, volume I > Part 15

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Mr. Stone was married to Miss Margaret Sarah Baldwin, of Ashfield, Mass., on April 18, 1872.

Mr. Stone has many large business inter- ests in Bradford and the surrounding eoun- try.

For the above sketeh we are indebted to J. H. Beers, History of MeKean County.

100

THIE BENCH AND BAR OF PENNSYLVANIA

WESTMORELAND COUNTY

BY JOHN N. BOUCHER

PART I.

THE EARLY BENCH AND BAR.

1773-1790.

INTRODUCTION.

It is extremely difficult at this late day, with our limited court records, to write a satisfactory history of the Westmoreland county bar. The leading features, however, in the lives of some of the judges and more eminent lawyers, from 1773 to 1850, have been partially preserved by the reminiscence of Mr. James Johnson, late of "Kingston House," and by the writings of Mr. George Dallas Albert, late of Latrobe, Pa. To these authorities and to newspaper files generally the writer has had access, and has drawn material from them frecly, which he has treated as authentic.

The aet establishing Westmoreland eoun- ty was passed by the Provincial Legislature on February 26, 1773. The county at its formation included all the territory of the present counties of Westmoreland, Wash- ington, Fayette, Allegheny, Greene, Butler, Beaver, Crawford, Erie, Mercer and Law- rence, and part of the counties of Arm- strong, Indiana, Venango and Warren. Nearly one-fourth of the entire state of Pennsylvania was embraeed in Westmore- land eounty, from which the above counties were afterwards erected. While she has been the mother of eounties in Western Pennsylvania she is still territorially one of the largest in the state, and the fourth in population among the rural counties. It is not uncommon that the first record titles of lands lying in many of the other counties are found in the early records of Westmore-

land county, partieularly is this true of Al- legheny county, which remained in our county nearly sixteen years.

Westmoreland county was erected during the proprietary government of the Penns and under the reign of the English law, though the latter was somewhat modified by the constitution of 1776. The act of May 22, 1722, authorized the appointment of a "com- petent number of justices of the peace" for cach county and any three of them had power to hold the ordinary quarter sessions court and common pleas eourt. The act of September 9, 1759, provided that "five per- sons of the best discretion, capacity, judg- ment and integrity," should be eommis- sioned for the common pleas and orphans' court, any three of whom were empowered to act. All were appointed for life on good behavior. By the constitution of 1776 the term was limited to seven years, but the constitution of 1790 restored the former tenure. The act of 1722 also provided for the appointment of a supreme court of three judges (afterwards inereased to four), be- fore whom the proceedings of the county court eould be reviewed. This supreme court had further jurisdiction over all eapital cases, and for this purpose they were com- pelled to sit in each county twice a year. Treason, murder, manslaughter, robbery. horse stealing, arson, burglary, witchcraft. etc., were all punishable by deatlı.

On February 27, the day following the passage of the act creating Westmoreland

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county, William Crawford, among others, was appointed a justice of the new county. The place of holding court was fixed at Han- nastown and on April 6, 1773, the first court of the county was convened with Judge William Crawford on the bench. The first business transacted by the court was to di- vide the county into townships. Then a grand jury was called with John Carnahan as foreman. This court was held in the log house of Robert Hanna, as were practically all of the courts of the county for the next thirteen years.

The judges who sat on the bench during this period of Westmoreland's history were not learned in the law. They were men of high standing in the community, but were generally little more than justices of the peace. This was the case all over the prov- ince at that time, and yet a writer of no less distinction than Henry Cabot Lodge, in his "History of the English Colonies in Amer- ica," page 232, speaks of the judicial sys- tem of Pennsylvania as "far above the co- lonial standard both as to the bench and the bar."

All of the judges and justices of the prov- ince were appointed by the president of the Supreme Executive Council under the act of May 22, 1722, with the above modifications. Their powers were very similar to those of the present common pleas and orphans' court judges. They were not only the high- est judicial officers of the county, but were men of distinction in social life. Their houses, it is true, were the ordinary log houses, with perhaps a few supplementary articles of furniture, but there was un- doubtedly a higher standard of sociability and a finer polish among them than among the pioneers generally. There was a vestige of the old world manners about them.

The distinction between the title "jus- tice" and "judge" seems to have been that when they sat on the bench of the county court they were called "judges," and oth-

erwise they were known as "justices." All

were commissioned as justices.

Judge William Crawford .- Very early in the Pennsylvania province it became the custom to distinguish one of the justices as president judge and this honor fell first to William Crawford when he was present, but the records sometimes show instances in which Lochry, Gist, Hanna, Foreman, Jack and Moore were named as president or "precedent" judges. When they met to hold court, if the regular president was not present, they selected one of their number to preside in his absence, but he did not hold the office of president by legislative au- thority prior to the act of January 28, 1777. This act has the following :

"The president and council shall appoint one of the justices in each county to preside in the respective courts, and in his absence the justices who shall attend the court shall choose one of themselves president for the time being."

Crawford was a man, who, even in his younger years, stood very high among the pioneers of both Pennsylvania and Virginia. He came West on the Braddock road shortly after the memorable defeat and took up land in 1767 near Connellsville, where he resided. He is described as a gentleman of the old school. He was personally acquainted with Washington before the latter was ap- pointed commander of the American armies (1775). He served under Washington in the Braddock campaign, and is mentioned sev- eral places in Washington's letters. He was born in Virginia in 1733. In order to fully understand his surroundings and his retire- ment from the Westmoreland bench the reader should acquaint himself with the causes of "Dunmore's War," which per- plexed our courts a great deal during this period. It arose from a dispute as to the boundary line between Virginia and Penn- sylvania. Virginia was granted by a royal charter in 1609, and Pennsylvania by

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TILE BENCH AND BAR OF PENNSYLVANIA

Charles II. in 1682. The entire southern boundary line of Pennsylvania was in dis- pute. Lord Baltimore, governor of Mary- land, arranged with the Penns, in 1767, that two surveyors should determine the true boundary between Maryland and Pennsyl- vania. The surveyors selected were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, but their au- thority extended only west as far as west- ern Maryland. The line they fixed is known as Mason and Dixon's line. This settled nothing therefore between Virginia and Pennsylvania. The former claimed all the territory between the Monongahela and Ohio rivers, and when our county was organized, Lord Dunmore became hostile and aggressive in asserting the claims of Virginia. Arthur St. Clair, a justice at Hannastown, had the Dunmore agent, Dr. Connolly, arrested and put in jail for interfering with armed men on horseback with the Westmoreland courts. When Connolly was released Lord Dunmore appointed him a Virginia justice and he proceeded to arrest the Westmoreland jus- tices and imprison them.

Many good people and most of our own settlers sided with Virginia, because that province with its unlimited territory, was selling Pennsylvania land cheaper than the Pennsylvania authorities were. The contro- versy was dropped by the breaking out of the Revolution when Lord Dunmore fled to the British army and never dared to return. Mason and Dixon's line was afterward ex- tended, and the boundary trouble was a mat- ter of the past.

In this matter Judge Crawford sided with Lord Dunmore and took the oath of al- legiance to Virginia in 1775. He was at once removed from office by the president of the supreme executive council, and the order re- moving him recognized him as the presiding justice. But his memory has not suffered in history because of his leaning towards Virginia. When the war of the Revolution came, he raised a regiment in western Vir-

ginia and Westmoreland county, was made its colonel and with it did great service in the Continental army. Toward the close of the war he was sent to guard the frontier against Indian incursions. To this end he built Fort Crawford on the Allegheny river near the present town of Arnold.

In 1782 he was appointed to command an expedition against the Indians on the San- dusky. It is known as Crawford's expcdi- tion and is the basis of one of the most heart- rending chapters of border history. His army was outnumbered and he himself was captured by the Indians under the leadership of the notorious Simon Girty. After much torture he was tied hand and foot and amid fiendish yells of joy, the Indians, thinking they were avenging the red men who had fallen before his command, put the bold and intrepid frontiersman to a most cruel death by burning him at the stake. Thus died the first of Westmoreland's provincial judges. He will ever be remembered as an honest and upright judge, a true patriot and a brave soldier.

Judge John Moore .- As will be seen by the foregoing, Crawford was retired from the bench prior to the passage of the act (1777) authorizing the appointment of a president judge, and, therefore, this distinction by legislative authority, came first in reality to John Moore. For ten years after Crawford's retirement, no one was appointed to the po- sition. This was during the Revolutionary war when the early settlers were largely in the army and but few sessions of court were held. John Moore was commissioned presi- dent judge in 1785, after having been eight years a justice under two previous commis- sions. His associates on the bench were Christopher Truby and William Jack. Five years later (1790) a new constitution was adopted by Pennsylvania. This provided that the judges were to be professional law- yers, that is, men learned in the law. Under this constitution, Moore, not being learned

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in the law, was retired and was succceded by Judge Addison.

He was a son of William and Janet (Wil- son) Moore, and was born in Lancaster county in 1738. His father died when he was a boy and his mother, in company with her brothers, moved to Western Pennsyl- vania in 1757. Moore was engaged in agri- culture and house building like most pio- ncers of his day until the beginning of the Revolution. Hc was a member of the con- stitutional convention which framed the con- stitution of 1776, and was appointed a jus- tice of the peace in 1777. In 1779 he was commissioned one of the justices of the civil courts of Westmoreland county, and in 1785 he was made president judge. In 1792 he was clected to the State Senate, representing the counties of Allegheny and Westmore- land. Little is known of his life after this' but that it was an honorable one, and that he died in 1812, and is buried at Congruity Church, about eight miles north of Greens- burg. He was married to a daughter of Isaac Parr, of New Jersey, "a woman of intelligence, vivacity and fine personal ap- pearance," who survived her husband many ycars. In personal appearance Judge Moore was six feet high, had large brown eyes, brown hair and an aquiline nose. He had two sons and four daughters. One of his daughters was the wife of Rev. Francis Laird, the progenitor of the well known Laird family of Westmoreland county.

Judge Robert Hanna, for whom Hannas- town was named, was one of the trustees appointed to locate the public buildings for the new county. The other trustees were Erwin, Cavet, Sloan, and Wilson. Hanna was the most powerful of these, for he suc- ceeded in locating the county seat and its buildings on his lands.

He was born in the northern part of Ire- land, and on reaching Western Pennsyl- vania, settled on the Forbes road, then a main thoroughfare which had been built by

Forbes, Boquet and Washington in 1758 on which to transport the army of the King in the second expedition from Bedford to Fort Duquesne. He took up lands about midway between Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt, and on them erected a log house for a residence. There being a good deal of travel on the road his house was soon leased to a neighbor and converted into a tavern. Near him he rapidly induced other emigrants to settle, and by 1773, when the county was formed, there was quite a colony of houses around Hanna's. It was, moreover, the chief stop- ping place between Pittsburgh and Ligonier.

On the formation of the county Robert Hanna was appointed a justice. The court at Hannastown being held at his house, he was on the bench very regularly, but never- theless little is known of his work as a judge.

Two of his daughters were captured at the burning of Hannastown; one of them es- caped and the other was taken to Canada and was married to a British officer at Fort Niagara.

Judge William Jack was born near the town of Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1751. But little is known of his life prior to his arrival in America. Tradition has it, however, that the family was of Huguenot descent, having been driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

In 1772 William Jack and his brother Matthew, aged twenty-one and seventeen re- spectively, settled near the present town of Greensburg. William married Margaret, a daughter of Charles Wilson, July 7, 1774, and Matthew married her sister Nancy some years later.

In the preliminary steps taken to form the new county in 1773, in Dunmore's war and the various Indian wars and in the Revolu- tion, William and Matthew Jack both took active parts. William was commissary offi- cer of Colonel Mackey's regiment, a lieuten- ant of Capt. Samuel Moorhead's independ-

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THE BENCH AND BAR OF PENNSYLVANIA

ent company and was commissioned a briga- dier general of militia by Governor Thomas Mifflin on April 19, 1793.

In 1784 he was commissioned by John Dickinson, president of the supreme exccu- tive council, as one of the county justices and was therefore ex officio a county judge. Christopher Truby and John Moore were on the bench with him and his commission ran seven years. The court minutes show that he was in more constant exercise of his func- tions on the bench at Greensburg than any other judge. John Moore was designated president judge, but frequently in Moore's absence William Jaek is noted as presiding. Upon the aeeession of Judge Addison (1791) Jack beeame an associate judge. Up to the close of the century he was on the bench at almost every term of eourt.

For some years prior to 1785 the projeet of removal of the county seat from Hannas- town had been agitated, as the minutes of the supreme executive eouneil show (Co- lonial Records, volume 14, page 287). The trustees of the county who passed on this question were Michael Rugh, Benjamin Davis, Hugh Martin, John Pomeroy and John Shields. General Jaek and others owned large tracts of land where Greens- burg now stands, and offered to donate lands for a courthouse, churches, cemetery, etc., if the county seat were located to suit them. Greensburg was accordingly selected in 1785 and the new town was named after the great Rhode Island Quaker general of the Revolution, Nathaniel Greene.

There is in possession of the descendants of General Jaek, the children of Mrs. Nancy Jack Wentling, late of Greensburg, a very laudatory letter given to General Jack on the eve of his departure for Europe. The letter indicates that he was a man of many high and noble qualities and is signed by John Moore, president judge; Christopher Truby, Michael Rugh, judges, and attested by Michael Huffnagle, prothonotary. The

letter is dated November 4, 1788. General Jack lived many years after this, dying February 18, 1821.

There were other justices who sat on the beneh during this provineial period, but these of whom we have written are fairly representative men of their day, and, we be- lieve, will enable the reader to form a eor- rect estimate of the men who presided over our eourts during the years between 1773 and 1790.

THE EARLY BAR.

GENERAL ARTHUR ST. CLAIR, BRECK- ENRIDGE AND OTHERS.

For some years after the formation of the county the Westmoreland bar scareely had a name as a bar. There were no resident lawyers in Hannastown. Lawyers eame from other counties to try eases regularly before judges and jurymen, but sessions of court were short and far between. The first lawyer who was regularly admitted to the bar, so far as the records show, was Franeis Dade, who was sworn August 3, 1773. The old reeords show the names of Espy, Irwin, Smiley, Galbraith, Megraw, Sample, Ross, Seott, Wilson and others.

Arthur St. Clair, afterwards Major Gen- eral St. Clair, president of the Continental Congress and elief commander of the armies of the United States, owned large tracts of land in Ligonier valley, twenty miles east, but none near Hannastown. But this pa- triot did not think of himself when the lo- eation of the county seat was to be selected. In this, as in all other matters, he easily overeame his personal interests and urged that the county seat be located at Pitts- . burgh, twenty miles further away from his lands.

He was the leader of the projeet to form the new county ; was a justice and sat on the bench of the county eourts; was the first prothonotary of Westmoreland county and

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WESTMORELAND COUNTY

filled the office till he entered the Revolu- tionary war, in 1776. His residence, when not absent on public business, was within the limits of the present county (at Ligonier) for nearly sixty years. He was not a mem- ber of the bar, at all events not a lawyer, though the records show that he often con- ducted cases. His name and character are so inseparably associated with the history of the United States, particularly with that of the Revolutionary period, that cven a brief sketch of him seems superfluous. Here at Greensburg, in a cemetery which bears his name, rests his ashes; and there are but few names in American history more thor- oughly perpetuated in the nomenclature of the different states than that of Arthur St. Clair.

We give the inscription on his monument without comment :

"The Earthly Remains of Major-General Arthur St. Clair are deposited beneath this humble monument, which is Erected to sup- ply the place of a nobler one due from his country. He died August 31st, 1818, in the 84th year of his age."

Hugh Henry Breckenridge, noted for his learning, eloquence and wit, afterwards jus- tice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, was admitted at Hannastown on the second Tuesday of April, 1781, and for many years practiced a great deal at this bar. Upon his motion David Bradford was admitted in 1782. Bradford came to this county from Maryland, became the head and front of the Whisky Insurrection, and was forced to flee the country. He settled finally in Missis- sippi, where he became a wealthy planter. These attorneys and some others were the first, and they practiced while the courts were held at Hannastown and before the re- moval of the county seat to Greensburg. Breckenridge was the most noted of them all, and an extended sketch of him would be in keeping in these articles were it not that he belonged to the Allegheny county

bar and will be. doubtless treated in that part of this work.

It must not be supposed that the carly courts were of an inferior character because the justices were not learned in the law. It will be remembered that Ebenezer Webster, the father of Daniel Webster, though not a lawyer, sat for many years as a judge of the common pleas court of New Hampshire. The justices were selected with great care, and were well suited and equipped to carry on the litigation of the primitive age in which they lived. They brought order out of chaos, and steadily advanced the pioneer standards of jurisprudence until 1790, when the com- munity was intellectually ready for the more exacting principles of the new constitution. After the constitution of 1790 went into force, there were still three judges on the bench, the president judge alone being learned in the law, the other two being as- sociate judges. The associate judges re- inained on the bench in Westmoreland coun- ty until after the adoption of the constitu- tion of 1873.

Hannastown-Notwithstanding the oppo- sition of Arthur St. Clair, who rightly thought Pittsburgh was a better location for the new county seat, Hanna's place was se- lected as the county seat of Westmoreland county and it was named Hannastown. The town, though unimportant in itself, attained a very exalted place in colonial history. There our forefathers stood like a stone wall against British tyranny, and adopted a dec- laration of independence on May 16, 1775, which very much resembles the great Dec- laration signed and published in Philadel- phia July 4, 1776.

The town is, moreover, memorable as the first place west of the Allegheny mountains where justice, though rude, its temple built of unhewn logs, was administered according to the forms and rules of the English law. Cities of untold wealth and power have risen, but few of them have achieved as

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THIE BENCHI AND BAR OF PENNSYLVANIA

glorious a record in history as this little col- icction of mud-plastered log huts built in the heart of a primeval forest in Western Penn- sylvania.

Hannastown was perhaps at its best in 1782 when it consisted of about thirty log houses, a jail, a whipping post and a pillory, for it must be remembered that the laws of the province demanded these implements of torture in every county seat and they were used at Hannastown. The town was burned by the Indians on Saturday afternoon, July 13, 1782. The log house used as a court- house was not burned. It was never owned by the county, a one-story log jail being the only building erected and owned by it. When the town was fired the jail was thrown open and the prisoners allowed to escape. The court records were taken into the fort and thus preserved to us from the destruc- tive wrath of the Indians.

The county seat was not at once moved to Greensburg, several sessions of court be- ing held at Hannastown after its destruction. There was always a dissatisfaction about the county scat being at Hannastown, and it is doubtful whether it would have remained there even though the town had not been burned. After its destruction this dissatis- faction culminated in 1785 and 1786, in its permanent location at Greensburg. The first session of court held in Greensburg was the January term of 1787 with Judge John Moore on the bench.

PART II.

THE BENCH OF THE PAST. THE JUDGES.

1790-1890.

Those who sat on the bench in Westmore- land county since the adoption of the con- stitution in 1790, that is, those who were "learned in the law," as was provided for in that constitution, are as follows:

Alexander Addison, from 1790 to 1803;

Samuel Roberts, from 1803 to 1805; John Young, from 1806 to 1836, a period of thirty and a half years, which was longer than that of any other judge on this bench; Thomas White, of Indiana county, from 1836 to 1847, Jeremiah M. Burrell, from 1847 to 1848, and again, he being a second time on the bench as in his biography later on will appear, from 1851 to 1855; John C. Knox, from 1848 to 1850; Joseph Buffington, from 1855 to 1871; James A. Logan, from 1871 to 1879; James A. Hunter, from 1879 to 1890.

(Judges Lucien W. Doty, Alexander D. McConnell and John B. Steel, the present oc- cupants of the bench, will be considered in the part of this work entitled "The Present Bench and Bar.")

Judge Alexander Addison, like many prominent men of his day, was born in a foreign land-in Ireland, in 1759. He re- ceived a thorough education at Edinburgh and was for many years a clergyman in the Presbyterian church in Scotland. IIe came to this country, arriving in Pennsylvania December 20, 1785, and applied to the old renowned Redstone Presbytery for license to preach in southwestern Pennsylvania. From some unknown cause the examination proved very unsatisfactory, but permission was granted to him to preach, his applica- tion having been made from the town of Washington. Not long after this, being per- haps disgruntled because of the difficulty in his examination, he abandoned the min- istry and took up the study of law. He finally settled in Pittsburgh, where he prac- ticed law for many years and with great success.

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The twentieth century bench and bar of Pennsylvania, volume I, Part 15

Author: Publication date: 1903 Publisher: Chicago, H. C. Cooper, jr., bro. & co. Number of Pages: 1102

Author:
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Chicago, H. C. Cooper, jr., bro. & co.
Number of Pages: 1102