USA > South Carolina > Charleston County > Charleston > History of the New England Society of Charleston, South Carolina, for One Hundred Years, 1819-1919 > Part 7
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"It is more in the stations of public trust and confidence that we would contemplate him-nor is it so much as a lawyer as a judge that we would consider his qualities; for whilst he prac- ticed at the bar twenty-two years before he was a judge, he sat on the bench thirty-one; and his
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mode, plan, and course of practice and con- ceptions of professional ethics belonged to a day so long past that few present can recall or appre- ciate them, but all remember him as a judge.
"It is more, too, in the character of a chan- cellor than even in his great office of chief justice that his judicial organization was manifested. He had essentially a mind and organism for equity. He entirely appreciated it, and it became, not irreverently to speak, almost a religion with him.
"When the Bishop of Salisbury, in the reign of Richard II, invented the writ of subpoena ad respondeum, which resulted in that procedure known to lawyers as the English bill, we may fairly infer it did not, and could not, have entered into the imagination of that prelate that he had brought into existence a judicial machine which would have so wonderful an influence upon human society. He did not surely, and could not, have conceived to what uses it would have been put under the master-hand of Sir Heneage Finch, Lord Nottingham, who, like D'Agesseau in France, has been called the father of equity in England; nor how, at a later day, it should in its consequences have been molded to such perfec-
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tion as it attained under the administration of the great Lord Eldon.
"It may well be said in this state that the venerable DeSaussure, like Nottingham in Eng- land, was the father of equity in South Carolina, and that his immediate successor, the eminent Dunkin, like Eldon, molded the system to the state of excellence at which it had arrived when it perished in the new order of things.
"There seems to be in many points a strong resemblance between Chancellor Dunkin and Lord Eldon, and it is not too much to say that the former loses nothing by the comparison. Both were deliberate-Lord Eldon slow. One indulged in copious language and ornate style; the other was plain, terse, and epigrammatic-what he intended to say, he said, and no more; the one was diffuse and elaborate; the other was brief and pointed. Both had great experience, and the coincidence on this point is striking since Lord Eldon had the seals of the Lord Chancellor for twenty-four years ten months and twenty-three days, with a broken interval in that time for nearly five years; whilst Chancellor Dunkin sat continuously on the bench for thirty-one years and eighteen days.
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"One very remarkable judicial characteristic of our subject cannot be omitted it was his wonderful precision in collecting and analyzing the facts of the case submitted to him. It was this that gave him so great power and facility in applying the principles of law to the actual state of the facts, which he had ascertained with the utmost patience and care.
"Hence he was not obliged to grope about in his judgment to wrest or distort the semblance of truth, to suit some favorite dogma, or theoretic maxim. Hence, whilst he might have said of himself laboro esse brevis, he could never condemn himself, obscurus fio.
"Hence, too, it is a remarkable fact that even in the first year of his circuits none of his decrees were overruled and very seldom afterward.
"The judicature in Chancery and Equity extended through every phase of society, to the rich and the poor, the lofty and the obscure. It pervaded all the relations of life. It began with the infant on his entrance into life; it followed in his boyhood and his youth; in his education and training; in his manhood, marriage, and matri- monial relations; then again in the cradle of his offspring; at the hearthstone; to the moment of
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death, and, after death, in the disposition of his worldly estate.
"An unostentatious piety, a pure and high morality, intense truthfulness, a large experience, profound study, great ability, and singular judg- ment symbolized in this great chancellor all that was requisite to perform these delicate, important, and extensive functions.
"That eminent judge and chancellor, Job Johnston, in the great case of Vanlew and Parr used this eloquent and noble judicial language: 'I tremble whenever I see in progress what is called a family arrangement; and I have struggled for fifteen years, with an anxiety and with a sincerity of effort which I feel has not been appreciated, to so regulate the enterprise of counsel and the impatience of interested parties as to prevent losses to widows and orphans inter- ested in estates, from causes to which their eager- ness has blinded them.'
"Chancellor Dunkin spent his judicial life in carrying into effect the principle which his learned brother has so elegantly expressed.
"But the scope of his far-seeing eye and watchful scrutiny was not limited to causes which affected only domestic and social rights
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and interests, but included the vast sphere of complex contracts and engagements between man and man, the construction and interpreta- tion of contracts, deeds, wills, and other instru- ments, and the restraint of wrong by the great writ of injunction; in all of which his learning, his patience, his scrupulous exactness, his experi- ence and enlarged comprehension, enabled him to approximate as near as it is within human reason and judgment to the attainment of truth; and we may be well warranted in summing up the judicial excellence of this learned and experi- enced magistrate to affirm that, among the men who have dispensed justice from the Equity bench in the United States, none were his superiors, and not a great many his equal.
"On his coming down from the seat of the chief justice at the close of the year 1868, he pre- sented a most remarkable spectacle.
"Although far advanced in years at that time, yet he preserved the full vigor and strength of a healthy body and unimpaired intellect. Cast upon his own resources at his advanced age, deprived of the remuneration of his office con- ferred upon him on a contract for life under the Constitution of 1790, crippled in his estate by the
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results of the war, he returned to his profession and, a septuagenarian, recommenced the practice of the laborious calling. Shorn of wealth and stripped of his great office at the same time, forced to seek a livelihood as a minister of the courts over all of which he had presided so long and with such honor and distinction, he did not shrink from the hard destiny, and no murmur or complaint ever escaped from his lips. The heathen valor of the youthful Scaevola endured the torment of slow fire in the presence of Por- senna; but it was more than Roman physical fortitude that sustamed this aged modern hero. The teachings of a religion pure and undefiled, a self-control and self-abnegation based upon the highest moral convictions, sustained his great spirit amidst these scorching trials. Such was his love for justice, such his love of the great principles that lie at the base of the social fabric of organized society, that, although the ermine had fallen from his shoulders and he could no longer officiate as chief priest at the altar of the tribunal of justice, he bent himself in humility in his old age and yielded to be a censer-bearer on the outside of the chancel.
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"One of the first acts of his new and renewed professional obligations was to argue a summary process, and after the present Supreme Court was organized he was one of the first of his brethren of the bar to present an argument before that body.
"For near six years he industriously and faith- fully labored again at his profession, and in the midst of the renewed trials belonging to a long past youth he was called away to his rest, 'eternal in the heavens.'
"Chief Justice Dunkin was married to Miss Washington S. Prentiss on January 18, 1820, and when only two days remained to complete a half- century of connubial affection and mutual respect and esteem, death with galling hand added affliction to his trials and snatched her from his breast, and left him to travel the weary remnant of life's journey without the companion of his youth and manhood, who had cheered him with hope on the rugged way and shared his joys in the hour of success and prosperity.
"It is becoming in the bar of Charleston, of whom Chief Justice Dunkin was a representative, to record their estimation of his long, able, and
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faithful discharge of judicial duty in the exalted stations in which he had been placed by the con- fidence of the people of the state, and to hold him up as an example for the study and imitation of all those who may succeed us in our honorable and responsible profession. Be it therefore
" Resolved, That in the death of the late able and distinguished Chief Justice Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin the jurisprudence of the country has lost an eminent advocate and supporter and the bar of Charleston one of its most conspicuous and valuable representatives.
"Resolved, That while we deplore this great public loss, we bow with reverence to the decree of the Almighty Judge that summoned this faith- ful minister of justice from the transitory courts of time to the Eternal Courts, in which there is neither error nor change.
"Resolved, That the chairman of this meeting be requested to transmit a copy of the foregoing memoir and these resolutions to the family of the deceased, and to express the condolence of the bar on this solemn occasion."
At the annual meeting of the New England Society, December, 1874, Hon. James B. Campbell,
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president of the Society, paid the following tribute to the memory of Judge Dunkin:
"Fifty-five years ago, about fifty natives of New England resident here founded this Society for the purpose, as they declared, of keeping alive in their minds the memory of the land of their birth, and the institutions of their fathers, and for even a higher object, 'to organize an efficient sys- tem of charity to such sons of New England as might in Charleston be arrested by disease or fall into poverty.'
"The survivor of all that little 'band of kind hearts and noble spirits,' after a long and honored life, has gone to his rest.
"There is now on the roll of our Society no living link between that day and this day- between that Past and this Present.
"He had wisdom more than genius-acquire- ments rather than gifts-he added to these sys- tematic labor and care. They made him beyond a doubt a wise and learned judge.
"The features of his character, like those of his person, were solid, substantial, and permanent. In what he did he aspired more to durability than ornament. His manners in the perform- ance of public duty were grave and formal,
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something rising to stateliness, if not austerity. These when carried into social life were softened and mingled with a genial politeness and kindli- ness never neglected.
"As a man, his life was without reproach. He had the great merit of fidelity and tenacity in his friendships. They were not exhausted by agree- able companionship in prosperity nor by kind words of comfort in adversity. He vindicated them, when the time of trial came, by liberal and effectual succor. It is very high praise to say this because it is the evidence of other great traits of character, of which this is the germ.
"He was brave and constant, and this tem- pered him for adversity, so that when the catas- trophe of unsuccessful revolution deprived him of fortune and of station neither his fortitude nor his self-control forsook him. Therefore it was that the way he bore himself in old age under the pressure of labor, of broken fortunes, and of hopes disappointed, was the great triumph, the crown- ing beauty of his long and laborious life; a life and career honorable to himself and reflecting honor as well upon the region of his birth as of his labors and of his home, the memory of which,
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faithfully transmitted to his posterity, will be the foundation of a just and rational pride."
Majorum gloria posteris lumen est neque bona neque mala in occulto patitur.
Judge Dunkin died December 5, 1874, at the age of eighty-two, loved and mourned by all who knew him.
BENJAMIN J. HOWLAND
Benjamin J. Howland was born in South Boston, Massachusetts, November, 1794. Mr. Howland traced his ancestry direct to those who were among the earliest to land from the Old World upon the shores of Massachusetts Bay, and ever retained a deep interest in everything con- nected with the history of the landing of the Pilgrims.
He came to Charleston in 1815 and was engaged in the mercantile business for more than forty years. As a merchant he won the entire confidence of the commercial cominunity and of his fellow-citizens by his active usefulness, strict integrity, and high sense of honor.
He became a member of the New England Society of Charleston in 1828 and so continued until his death, taking a lively interest during a
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membership of near half a century in everything connected with its prosperity, both as a social and as a charitable organization. He was for a number of years one of its vice-presidents.
In everything calculated to advance the pros- perity of Charleston Mr. Howland always took a ready and active working part. He was among those sagacious and far-seeing merchants who at an early period, struggling against disheartening difficulties, succeeded in connecting Charleston with Augusta by the South Carolina Railroad, one of the earliest and for many years the longest railroad in the United States. He served in the directorate of that road for several years.
As a member of the board of firemasters he was also an energetic worker for many years, in which position his sound judgment and calmness in time of danger gave great value to his services.
Serving as a member of the Common Council of Charleston, he was greatly esteemed by those with whom he was associated, invariably giving entire satisfaction to his fellow-citizens generally.
The leading prominent feature in the character of Mr. Howland seemed to have been his open- hearted, active, practical benevolence. The great aim of his life was to advance the welfare and
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happiness of his fellow-men. In the promotion of this object his zeal and labors were unceasing.
An old and wonderfully prosperous savings institution of this city owed its existence to him, and its years of great success and usefulness were due to his active zeal, aided by those whom he enlisted in that work. Its subsequent destruction was among the great calamities of the war which fell upon Charleston. Its leading benevolent feature at one time was its investments in real estate securities, which, if adhered to, might have saved it from ruin.
The good deeds of Mr. Howland were not con- fined to those which came under the public eye. He was vigilant in looking for those who needed assistance, always ready to render it by word or act, without ostentation and without seeking applause.
These charitable traits of character and habits of benevolence did not change with his change of home, and we find him during the latter years of his life, while a resident of New York, actively and energetically engaged as a member of the Children's Aid Society, an institution dedicated to the aid and reform of destitute children in that city, and accomplishing great good.
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Mr. Howland died in New York City, Decem- ber 10, 1874, having attained the ripe old age of more than fourscore years.
JOHN EDWARDS HOLBROOK
John Edwards Holbrook was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, December 30, 1794. He died in Norfolk, Massachusetts, September 8, 1871. His early life was spent in Wrentham, Massachusetts, the original home of his father's family. He was graduated from Brown University in 1815 and from the medical department at the University of Pennsylvania in 1818. He continued his profes- sional studies for four years in London, Edinburgh, and Paris. He married Miss Harriott Pinckney Rutledge in 1827. Dr. Holbrook began the practice of medicine in Charleston in 1822. The same year he became a member of the New Eng- land Society. Two years later he was elected pro- fessor of anatomy in the South Carolina Medical College, where he taught for more than thirty years. His lectures on comparative anatomy attracted wide attention. Dr. Holbrook's greatest achievement was his American Herpetology, or a Description of Reptiles Inhabiting the United
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States. This work gave him not only a national but a world-wide reputation as a leader in scientific thought. For a time Dr. Holbrook was more famous as an original thinker in Europe than in America.
In an appreciation prepared by Dr. T. L. Ogier and published in 1871, the following state- ment is of interest:
"Dr. Holbrook completed his work on herpetol- ogy, on which he had long been engaged, in 1842; but before its completion his reputation as a pro- ficient in this branch of natural history had been made by the correct descriptions and accurate and elegant representations of the animals con- tained in the first numbers of the work.
"He visited Europe about this time and was received in the Jardin des Plantes with open arms by Valenciennes and other naturalists whom he had known before his attention was turned to this special branch of natural history. In the vast collection of reptiles in the museum of this garden he found several different animals grouped under one division and some described as different varieties which were only the young of a class before described. He pointed out these mistakes and made them evident to those in charge of the
OTIS MILLS
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museum, who were the chief naturalists of Paris, and was invited by them to overhaul the ani- mals and put his own labels on them, which he did; and he has often spoken of this as one of the greatest compliments paid to his knowledge of reptiles. It was indeed a high appreciation of his merit as a naturalist.
"Dr. Holbrook's work on herpetology, which is one of the most correct, as well as beautiful, ever written, was undertaken under great diffi- culties, and only a true lover of science could have surmounted them. In his Preface he says: 'In undertaking the present work, I was not fully aware of the many difficulties attending it. With an immense mass of materials, without libraries to refer to, and only defective museums for compari- son, I have been constantly in fear of describing as new, animals that have long been known to European naturalists.' Yet, with all these diffi- culties, the Doctor succeeded in completing his work, which is now considered authoritative in herpetology.
"After the publication of his Her petology, Dr. Holbrook commenced a work of the ichthy- ology of the Southern states. This was a laborious undertaking, obliging him to go to distant parts of
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the country wherever the fishes were to be found, or else to have them drawn from preserved speci- mens in which the colors and, in fact, the charac- ter, of the animal is often lost. The labor of traveling in the Southern states, up the rivers and swamps, was too great; and 'his love of truth requiring that all his plates should represent living animals,' and not those shriveled and altered by alcohol and other preserving fluids, he altered the plan of his work, and confined his studies to the Fishes of South Carolina. Of this work, two numbers with most accurate and beautiful plates of some of our fishes were published, showing what a splendid work it would have been had he been allowed to complete it; but a fire occurring in Philadelphia, where the work was being published, destroyed most of the plates and much of the material of the work. This misfortune, being followed by the late war which necessarily inter- fered with his studies, put an end to his labors in this beautiful branch of natural history, to which his work would have been an elegant contribu- tion."
Through his Her petology Dr. Holbrook became acquainted with Louis Agassiz, the greatest naturalist of his time. The acquaintance grew
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into a deep friendship, Dr. Holbrook spending a part of each summer at the home of Dr. Agassiz in New England. After the death of Dr. Hol- brook, Louis Agassiz, speaking before the Natural History Society of Boston, paid the following tribute to his dear friend and colleague:
"Highly as he was appreciated by all to whom he was personally known and by his scientific peers and colleagues, America does not know what she has lost in him nor what she owed to him. A man of singularly modest nature, eluding rather than courting notice, he nevertheless first compelled European recognition of American Science by the accuracy and originality of his investigations. I well remember the impression made in Europe more than five and thirty years ago by his work on the North American reptiles. Before then, the supercilious English question, so . effectually answered since, 'Who reads an American book ?' might have been repeated in another form, 'Who ever saw an American scientific work ?' But Holbrook's elaborate history of American herpetology was far above any previous work on the same subject. In that branch of investiga- tion Europe had at that time nothing which could compare with it."
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Dr. Holbrook was a member of the American Philosophical Society and of the National Acad- emy of Sciences. During the Civil War, he was the chairman of the Examining Board of Surgeons of South Carolina.
HENRY WORKMAN CONNER
Henry Workman Conner was born near Beattie's Ford, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, March 4, 1797. He was of Irish descent, his ancestors having come to America from Antrim, Ireland. His eldest son, General James Conner, merited fame as a Confederate leader in the Civil War and was one of the representative men of South Carolina in the years that followed. The subject of this sketch came to Charleston early in life, entered the mercantile business, and gradually by reason of energy, ambition, ability, and sterling integrity became one of the leading financiers in the South.
In 1835 he was a factor in the organization of the Bank of Charleston, an original director, and in 1841 became its president. This bank became nationally prominent, and is today the leading financial institution of South Carolina.
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After the great fire of 1837, it was largely through the influence and faith of Mr. Conner that the Charleston Hotel and other buildings in its immediate vicinity were rebuilt. Mr. Conner was assisted in this momentous task by Lorenzo Tucker Potter, a New Englander and a member of the New England Society.
In 1850 Mr. Conner was elected president of the South Carolina Railroad. In 1853 he went to New Orleans, where he spent five years.
He was president of the Hibernian Society of Charleston for a number of years, and, it may be said, its most distinguished president. He was also active and liberal in all of the charitable organizations of the city.
He joined the New England Society in 1828 and was prominent in its deliberations for a generation.
He died January 11, 1861, loved and mourned by the entire city.
The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin said of him at the time of his death:
"The two communities of Charleston and New Orleans have to regret the loss of a member important to both. A half a century passed in active business placed him at the head of every
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movement, mercantile and financial, which has been inaugurated in the former place; whilst in the latter a short residence of some five years was rapidly leading him to the same enviable pre- eminence. Gifted with the strongest traits of character, he was felt wherever he appeared and he left his impress for good upon everything he touched. Self-taught and self-sustained, he ever stood the man among the men of the occasion. A powerful mind governed a strong will and a genial heart directed both to the good of all around him. Energy of thought and energy of action were directed by practical sense-hence success followed every effort, and public institutions and private individuals alike have reason to bless the healthful exercise of his influence. In early life we find him a merchant, and his fitness for that vocation is evidenced by the success which followed him through the severest trials. Test him as a prac- tical man and his energy finds a glorious illustra- tion in the results of the railroad system, not of South Carolina alone, but to some extent of Georgia also. As a financier he shows a brilliant record whilst wielding the three millions of the Bank of Charleston, rendering that institution a
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