USA > Wisconsin > Fond du Lac County > Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, past and present, Volume I > Part 23
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The Fond du Lac, Amboy & Peoria railway was a narrow gauge road origi- nated by Judge Alonzo Kinyon, of Lee county, Illinois, one of the founders of the Chicago & Rock Island railroad and its chief executive officer. The com- pany was organized at Amboy, Illinois, May 30, 1874, by Alonzo Kinyon, of Amboy, and Egbert Shaw, of Lee Center, Illinois; W. P. Wolf, Tipton, Iowa; T. H. and B. A. Mink, Clarence, Iowa. In December of that year the company organized under the laws of Wisconsin. Alonzo Kinyon was made president of the Illinois division of the road and W. P. Wolf of the Wisconsin.
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March 22, 1875, the two divisions of the company were consolidated and Alonzo Kinyon was elected president by the directors. Financial aid was given the com- pany by various towns in Dodge county and they also turned over to the enter- prise the graded right of way of the old Mayville & Iron Ridge railroad. The city of Fond du Lac guaranteed the payment of interest for ten years on $200,- 000 of the first mortgage bonds of the company, $30,000 of which was promised for the erection of railroad shops in the city In 1875, owing to difficulties that had arisen, Judge Kinyon resigned from the presidency and took the contract to finish the road. This he accomplished as far as Iron Ridge. The road was ab- sorbed by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company in 1885 and is a part of that system at the present time. In 1897 the depot of the St. Paul road was moved to the east side of the river.
The extension of the Wisconsin Central was completed to Fond du Lac in 1881, and Chicago was reached in 1883. By a trackage arrangement, citizens of Fond du Lac are carried to Chicago by way of Rugby Junction. In 1896, C. F. Whitcomb became president of the road. and that year large shops were transferred to North Fond du Lac, a suburb of the city, which became division headquarters of the road. The street railway line was extended to the growing village and in 1897 shops of the Northwestern were located there.
A NORTHWESTERN WRECK
Within a few weeks after the Northwestern had completed its line from Chicago to Fond du Lac, a wreck occurred on the road, bringing in its train death, and untold anguish to the community. A long train, filled with people from Chicago, Janesville, Watertown and other places along the line, had visited Fond du Lac on the 12th day of October, 1859, to participate in a celebration given by the people of the city in commemoration of the completion of the new railroad to their doors. There were twenty-five carloads of men, women and children who came to witness the parade, illuminations at night, hear speeches and attend the banquet. The Zouave cadets were out in full regalia, so was the fire department and civic organizations, all led by the splendid Chicago Light Guard band. The final triumph of the occasion was a grand ball at Amory's hall, where the belles and beaux of city, village, hamlet and farm reveled the night away. To show their appreciation of the generous turnout of their neigh- bors along the Northwestern's line to Chicago, fully 1,600 people of Fond du Lac county and her neighbors, returned the visit and entrained for Chicago. The cars were crowded but all were in good spirits and the best of humor. While the train was running at a speed of about ten miles an hour and when about eight miles below Watertown, an ox, which had been grazing near the unfenced track, became frightened at the locomotive and in its confusion sprang directly in front of it and fell into and became wedged in the culvert. The pilot of the engine struck the firmly fastened beast full on, which threw the engine and five cars loaded with their precious freight from the track. The scene which followed was a terrible one. There were at least two hundred people in the wrecked cars and it was believed all had perished. T. F. Strong, Sr., who was on the train, sent his son, Tim, to Watertown for assistance. He got there by taking possession of a horse and buggy and, placing a gravel train in requisi-
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tion, was back to the place of disaster in a comparatively short interval of time, bringing with him physicians, medicines and other necessaries. Fourteen per- sons were taken from the debris, who were either dead at the time or expired soon after. Among them were seven from Fond du Lac: Major J. Thomas, United States marshal; Timothy L. Gillet, one of the promoters and first directors of the road ; Jerome Mason, express agent and telegraph operator; John Board- man and Isadore Snow, carpenters; Edward H. Sickles, a bookbinder; and Van Buren Smead, of the Democratic Press, who lived in torture until Novem- ber 29. Among the Fond du Lac passengers seriously injured were Robert Flint, Mrs. R. M. Lewis, Mrs. James Kinney, Mrs. John Radford, Edward Beeson, J. Q. Griffith, James W. Partridge and A. D. Bonesteel.
CHAPTER X
THE BENCH AND BAR
EARLY COURTS-THE BENCH AND ITS ABLE MEN-ADVOCATES PROMINENT AT THE FOND DU LAC BAR-AMONG THEM WERE ORATORS, WRITERS, POETS AND MEN OF HIGH SOLDIERLY QUALITIES.
In establishing the territorial government of Wisconsin, congress provided for the division of the territory into three judicial districts, and for the holding of a district court by one of the justices of the supreme court in each district, two terms each year in each organized county in the district. The three judges were Charles Dunn, David Irvin and William C. Frazer. By an act of the terri- torial legislature, approved November 15, 1836, the counties of Brown and Mil- waukee, the territory now comprising Fond du Lac, being in the former, con- stituted the third district, which was assigned to Justice Frazer. By the Wis- consin territorial statutes of 1839, the counties of Brown, to which Fond du Lac was attached, Milwaukee and Racine, were placed in the third district, which was assigned to Justice Andrew G. Miller, who succeeded Judge Frazer upon the latter's death. As to all judicial matters, Fond du Lac county was detached from Brown county in 1844, but remained in the third district until the adoption of the state constitution in 1848. The first court therefore held within its limits was a territorial district court and the district courts were continued until super- seded by the state circuit courts, upon the admission of Wisconsin into the Union.
The first territorial district court for Fond du Lac county was held at the schoolhouse in Fond du Lac, June 5, 1844, with Judge Andrew G. Miller on the bench. Other officials of the court were Isaac Brown, clerk; George McWilliams and R. Aiken, United States deputy marshals; John J. Driggs, sheriff ; Alonzo Raymond, bailiff ; Thomas W. Sutherland, district attorney; and M. C. Darling, foreman of the grand jury.
The state constitution which was adopted in May, 1848, provided for five circuit courts and as many districts, and in the fourth district were placed the counties of Brown, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, Fond du Lac, Winnebago and Calu- met. The first judge was Alexander P. Stow, who became the first chief justice of the state supreme court. In 1905, the eighteenth district was created and Chester A. Fowler was elected as the resident judge from Fond du Lac. The counties comprising the circuit are Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Marquette, Co- lumbia and Adams. The terms of court for Fond du Lac begin on the first Monday in February, first Monday in May, second Monday in September, and second Monday in November.
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THE BENCH
Alexander W. Stow
The fourth judicial circuit had for its first judge after the organization of the state, Alexander, W. Stow, of whom Morgan L. Martin, his life long and honored friend, wrote as follows: "Alexander W. Stow was born at Lowville, New York, February 5, 1805. His father, Silas Stow, was a prominent federal- ist in the early political struggles of that state, was chief justice of the county court, which made him the associate of the supreme judge at nisi prius, and for one term represented the district in congress. He was a man of superior ability and culture and possessed a fund of general knowledge which placed him in the front rank of the public men of his day. The son inherited much of the talent of the father. Judge Stow was never a close student, but under the tute- lage of his father and the eminent men with whom he was brought into asso- ciation in early life he became, almost by tuition, an accomplished scholar.
"At the age of sixteen he was placed at the military academy, where he re- mained only a single year, and returned to enter his law office in his native vil- lage. In due time he was admitted to practice and formed a partnership with Hon. Justin Butterfield, late commissioner of the general land office, then resid- ing at Sacketts Harbor. That the superior ability of young Stow was fully ap- preciated by him may be inferred from a remark of his in 1826, that he 'had never known a man of superior constitutional powers.' A few years of routine practice, during a short respite from which he spent a few months in European travel, bring him to the time of his election as chief justice of our state.
"His eccentricities were many and peculiar. There were some by which his general character was judged of harshly and unfavorably by those little ac- quainted with him; there were many which should go far to redeem it from re- proach. He was peculiarly jealous of the independence of the judiciary, and would only accept a position on the bench under a pledge not to serve a second term. It must be unincumbered by obligations of any character save such as appropriately attached to the office to maintain its dignity and to preserve its purity. If any attempt was made, by solicitation or otherwise, to influence him in the discharge of its duties, the act was indignantly rebuked or summarily punished. He was particularly cautious to avoid any influence of favoritism on the one hand, and equally so that his rulings upon the bench should be free from a taint of prejudice on the other.
"As presiding officer of the supreme court, his highest eulogium may be found in the opinions he pronounced during his short official term. They exhibit . great comprehensiveness of thought; are terse, excisive and pungent in diction, and furnish models of judicial composition. The common law is well defined as the common sense of mankind, and he imitated the virtues of the most eminent jurists by making it the broad foundation upon which his decisions were uni- formly based."
The late Chief Justice Ryan held a more favorable view of Judge Stow's ability than did Mr. Martin. He says that he did not know him before they met in Wisconsin. Thence till the Judge's death, the writer is proud to say that they were intimate and fast friends. Knowing the Judge then, in the
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prime of his professional life, the writer finds it difficult to believe that the late chief justice had not been at some time a close and extensive student. His acquaintance with books, in and out of the line of professional reading, was varied and extensive. He might have been called almost a scholar in general literature and he most surely was one in professional learning. He was one of the best, if not the very best, common lawyer whom the writer has ever met. He was not one of those to whom the common law was a fragmentary confusion of disjointed rules. He had mastered not only its details but the history out of which it grew. And his vigorous and broad mind grasped it as a system in its full spirit and comprehended the mutual relations and symmetry of all its parts. He well understood that it is not a mere system of municipal law, but that it is, with all its blemishes, the noblest code of personal rights which the world has ever known ; which educates men in free and self-reliant manhood, and which has done more than all written systems or constitutions for the freedom of the nations who are blessed in its possession. Judge Stow was certainly an accomplished common lawyer.
In the learning of modern decisions, the multitudinous reports of the last quarter of a century or more, which perplex too many of us with bewildering. variety of rule, Judge Stow could not be said to be a scholar. He was not a. case lawyer ; but he was a better lawyer than mere case learning can make. The fundamental principles which underlie all sound judicial decisions were familiar to him and mainly guided his judgments. The common law was his judicial creed. And there is a soundness of judgment, a strength of sense, a massive- ness of reasoning, and a manliness of language in his opinions, which are not at- tained in the study of modern reports; which none of his successors have ex- celled, if, indeed, any of them have equaled. He held the scales of justice with a strong but nice hand. His opinions are very generally sound in matter and really admirable in manner. He owed this partly to his common law, partly to the strength of his character, and the energy, accuracy and justice of his intel- lect.
For his character was singularly solid and firm, and his faculties were of high order. There were indeed occasional eccentricities in his thinking as well as in his acting. Making some allowance for these, he was surely a great man in- tellectually. The writer doubts if he ever knew an abler. His views were always vigorous, often profound, and generally discriminating and just. He was in- deed a man of strong prejudices, but these rarely, if ever, influenced him on the bench : never consciously. He loved truth for truth's sake, with intense love. He loved justice for itself, with natural and professional devotion. Many dis- liked the man, but none ever doubted the judge. He revered the judicial office : and while he held it, he made all men respect it. He had a high sense of judicial dignity and authority ; and there was no trifling with the court in which he presided. On the bench he looked what he was, a great judge.
He was strongly opposed, on principle, to elective judiciary. He believed that the system had a tendency to make judges representatives of the popular will. He feared that it had a tendency to make judges court favor on the bench. This led him, when solicited to be a candidate at the first judicial election, to declare that, if elected once. he would not suffer himself to be reelected. He chose to place the judicial office in his keeping above suspicion. The system was.
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then untried ; and he failed to give due consideration to the self-respect and pro- fessional pride which raise all fit for office above the mean ambition of keeping it by sinking into unfitness for it. He would have been reelected after his brief term, but for his own truth to his own promise to himself. That honorable but mistaken pledge cost the state a great judge; how great his short judicial service can only indicate. He is now comparatively unknown and unappreciated. A longer judicial career would undoubtedly have placed him in the front rank of American judges. With all our boast of the present, judicial eminence is not what it was. And thoughts of him and of those who preceded and followed him in his place in this court, and who honored it as he did, Dunn, Whiton and Dixon, make the present writer feel of himself,
Attali, Ignotus ยท Haeres, Regiam Occupavi.
Judge Stow left the bench after some two and a half years' service; and lived in private some five or six years, never again resuming his profession. He died with the deep respect of the profession throughout the state ..
He was not a man of many attachments, but all his affections were faithful and lasting. Those only who knew him well, knew that beneath an outside rarely gentle and often harsh, he had a generous and noble nature and led a life of genuine kindness and consideration for all whom he honored with his intimacy. He was perhaps deficient in some of the gentler qualities of our nature. But none of his peculiarities arose from mean or false qualities. There was nothing small in his nature. All his eccentricities were excesses of strength. A high integrity pervaded his whole character. He bore to his grave the profound regard of all who were happy enough to know him as he really was. And the present writer gives feeble expression to his sense of Judge Stow's excellence by this crude and hasty reminiscence of a good man and just judge.
Mr. Bryant has collected some anecdotes of Judge Stow which were pub- lished in his contribution to the Green Bag. The Judge was long remembered in Madison, where he presided as chief justice, by his tastes, so strange to the western people. He had acquired in foreign travel the taste for game well "ripened." It was told with disgust that the chief justice required his prairie chickens to hang out of his bedroom window till the legs and bills were green, and the feathers rubbed off by a stroke of the hand, and the odor told of decay before he would allow them to be cooked. He was a proud man and stood upon his dignity. It is told that he had a client, one Captain B., who had been an officer in the British service, and being a man of wealth, had settled in Wiscon- sin. He was a little peremptory in his bearing, yet he and Stow were warm friends, and the latter was his trusted counsel. One day Captain B. rode up to the door of Stow's office and, not wishing to dismount, which was something of a task to a man of his bulk and years, he called to Stow through the open door : "Judge Stow, come out here a moment." The lawyer, offended by the brusque- ness of manner and dominating air, which had often nettled him before, sung out, "See you d-d first ; if you want to see me, come in here." A general substitution of attorney followed this episode.
Another anecdote is told of this jurist. One of his cases decided at the cir- cuit had been reversed by the supreme court, of which he was chief justice. The remittitur confronted him at the circuit, and he was reminded that his
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decision was reversed. "Then," said he, "I have only one other decision to make, and that is, that the supreme court are consummate blockheads."
. Judge Stow came to Wisconsin from Rochester, New York, in 1845, and settled at Fond du Lac, purchasing a farm at or near Taycheedah. He main- tained a law office at Milwaukee. He was never married and died in Milwaukee, September 14, 1854.
TIMOTHY OTIS HOWE
The basis of the enviable fame connected with the name and memory of Timothy O. Howe is political rather than judicial. For long years he stood the idol of his party in Wisconsin and the object of the respect of all the people of the state. Indeed, his fame was national. His ability as a lawyer and judge has been obscured by the lasting success won by him in the political world.
Mr. Howe was born in Livermore, Maine, February 24, 1816. His father practiced medicine in a rural district. Besides such advantages as the common schools afforded, he spent some time at a grammar school; at eighteen he at- tended the Maine Wesleyan Seminary and at twenty was prepared for college. His hope for a collegiate education was not realized. Instead of going to col- lege he began to read law, and at the age of twenty-three located at Readfield, Vermont, for the purpose of practicing his profession. Among those then there and practicing law was Lot M. Morrill, afterward Mr. Howe's compeer in the senate. Presumably his experience as a young lawyer was much the same as that of those who enter the profession in these days. In 1842 he was an unsuc- cessful candidate for the nomination for the office of clerk of the court of the county of his residence, and in 1843, though nominated for that office, was unsuccessful. In 1845 he was elected a member of the popular branch of the legislature' as a whig. It is said that he there "took a prominent part as a de- bater beside the late William Pitt Fessenden, the recognized leader of the house."
In 1845 he came to Wisconsin, settling at Green Bay, where he opened a law office and ever after resided. In 1848 he was the whig candidate for congress, but failed of election. In 1850 he was elected judge of the fourth circuit, and in January, 1851, took his seat as a justice of the supreme court and acted in that capacity until 1853. He resigned his seat on the circuit bench in 1855 and resumed the practice of the law, which he continued till 1861, when he was chosen United States senator. In 1855 he made an excellent reputation as a "stump speaker" for the newly organized republican party, and in 1856 added largely to his reputation as a lawyer by his argument in the case involving the right of the respective contestants before the people to the office of governor. The fact that he was retained in that case, which called forth the best efforts of J. E. Arnold, H. S. Orton, M. H. Carpenter, J. H. Knowlton and E. G. Ryan, closes the door to any question of his professional standing. Mr. Howe might have been elected to the senate of the United States in 1857 but for the fact that he had taken strong ground in opposition to the states' rights views which were then predominant in the republican party, but he preferred defeat to any modifi- cation of his opinions and saw himself fully vindicated by the acceptance of his. views a little later. He was reelected to the senate in 1867 and again in 1873, each time without the formality of a caucus. At the end of eighteen years of
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service in that body he was defeated by Matthew H. Carpenter in 1879. Mr. Howe's other public service included a commissionership for the purchase of the Black Hills territory from the Indians, membership in the international monetary conference held in Paris in 1881, and a seat in the cabinet of Presi- dent Arthur, as postmaster general which he took in January, 1882. His death occurred March 25. 1883. It was generally understood that during the second presidential term of General Grant, Judge Howe was tendered the appointment of chief justice of the supreme court of the United States, that he put aside the honor because the legislature of his state was democratic, and his successor would therefore be of that faith.
WILLIAM R. GORSLINE
William R. Gorsline was judge of the fourth circuit from 1855 until July 1, 1858, succeeding Timothy O. Howe. He was born in Manlius, Onondaga county, New York, June 28, 1823. In early childhood he was left an orphan, but re. ceived, through the care of an uncle, an academic education in his native town. His study of the law was also begun there. In 1844 he removed to Milwaukee and completed his legal studies in the office of Francis Randall. The following year he opened a law office in Sheboygan, and during that year and 1846 was register of deeds of Sheboygan county. In 1850 and 1851 he was county judge. April 3, 1855, he was elected to the circuit bench to fill the unexpired term of Judge Howe, and in 1856 he was reelected for a full term, but served only until July, 1858, when he resigned for the purpose of going to Colorado.
Reaching Colorado, he began the practice of the law and continued therein until 1860, when President Buchanan appointed him one of the district judges. a position to which President Johnson reappointed him. During 1867, 1868 and 1869 he was a justice of the supreme court of Colorado territory. The opinions filed by him are contained in the first volume Colorado reports. On the admis- sion of that territory into the Union he resumed the practice of his profession in Denver, where he died March 3, 1879. Judge Gorsline was succeeded by David Taylor, whose term of service covered the years 1858 to 1869.
DAVID TAYLOR
David Taylor was born at Carlisle, Schoharie county, New York March 11, 1818. On his father's side he was of Irish ancestry ; on his mother's of Dutch descent. He was graduated from Union College in 1841, and admitted to the bar at Cobbleskill, New York, in 1844, where he practiced law two years. In February, 1846, he arrived in the territory of Wisconsin, and after looking over Milwaukee and Green Bay, determined to settle at Sheboygan. He became a member of the firm of Taylor & Hiller in July, 1846. He faithfully and ac- ceptably discharged the duties connected with local offices and served one term as district attorney of Sheboygan county. In 1853 he was elected to the popular branch of the legislature and in 1854 was chosen a state senator, serving in the sessions of 1855 and 1856, and was again elected to the senate after ten years' service as circuit judge, sitting in that body in 1869 and 1870. His second election as senator occurred in November, 1868, when he was circuit judge, his
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term as such not expiring until December 31, and his term as senator beginning on the next day. Under this state of facts and the provision of section 10, article 7, of the constitution that "Each of the judges of the supreme and cir- cuit courts shall receive a salary, payable quarterly, of not less than one thou- sand five hundred dollars annually ; they shall receive no fees of office or other compensation than their salaries; they shall hold no office of public trust, ex- cept a judicial office, during the time for which they are respectively elected, and all votes for either of them for any office except a judicial office, given by the legislature or the people, shall be void," it was contended by Judge Taylor's op- ponent that he was ineligible and his right to a seat in the senate was contested. The question was referred to the judiciary committee, a majority of which re- ported that they were of the opinion that the last clause of the section quoted "was only intended to give force to the prohibition contained in the first clause, and not to add a new or further prohibition, and that its effect is the same as though it read 'and all votes given for either of them for any office to be held during the term of his judicial office shall be void.'" This view was sustained by a vote of eighteen against eight.
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