USA > Wisconsin > Milwaukee County > Milwaukee > History of Milwaukee from its first settlement to the year 1895 > Part 73
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was made, but the Confederates sent word to But- ler that no more prisoners should be sent to them in that manner.
Col. Hobart's return to Wisconsin, after his escape from prison, attracted wide-spread atten- tion, and he was beset on all sides to speak to the public of his experiences as a prisoner and tell the story of his escape. The legislature, then in ses- sion, passed a joint resolution, asking him to make such an address, and he complied, and it is said that there never was a more interested or attentive audience in Madison. He was given a royal recep- tion in Milwaukee and compelled to repeat the story. At the expiration of his furlough he joined his regiment in the field and was given a commission as colonel, Sweet having been pro- moted to brigadier-general. His command formed a part of Gen. Sherman's advance on Atlanta, and participated in the battles of Buzzard's Roost, Resaca, Dallas, New Hope Church, Kenesaw Mountain, Marietta, Chattahoochie and Peach Tree Creek. He also participated in the capture of Atlanta and witnessed its surrender September 2, 1864, and was there promoted to command the First Brigade, First Division, of the Fourteenth Corps, and was its commander until the end of the war. He was in the " March to the Sea," under General Sherman, and on the capture of Savannah was promoted by President Lincoln, on the recommendation of General Sherman, to brigadier-general by brevet, for meritorious ser- vice. His brigade was in the battles through the Carolinas, including the actions at Averysboro, and Bentonville and at the capture of Raleigh. After the surrender of the Confederate Army he marched through Richmond to Washington and led his brigade in the great review of the Union Armies. On June 8, 1865, more than four years after he had closed his law office at Chilton, this brave soldier, successful commander, who had won his way from a private to a brigadier-general. unbuckled his sword. parted with his command and was again a civilian. The order which retired him spoke of "the faithful, efficient and energetic manner in which he had discharged his duties."
The feeling of his superior officers toward him is illustrated by the following letter of Gen. Lovel H. Rousseau, the celebrated division commander in the Army of the Cumberland, who in 1865 wrote to Hon. George H.
Paul, Wisconsin state senator, and editor of the Milwaukee News:
LOUISVILLE, Ky., Oct. 5, 1865.
DEAR SIR: Yours of the 29th ult. was received on yesterday. In answer to inquiry touching the personal bearing of Gen. IIarrison C. Hobart as a soldier, while serving under my command, I have to say that Gen. Hobart served under me as colo- nel of the Twenty-first Wisconsin for nearly a year. During that time I saw a great deal of him and was fully cognizant of the manner in which he discharged his duties in the camp and on the battle field. I have no hesitation in saying that in my opinion, I did not know a more efficient or a braver colonel in the Army of the Cumberland than he. The discipline, drill and bearing of his regiment on all occasions was proof of this, for though small, it was one of the best and most re- liable. I have often seen both the colonel and his regiment under fire. Very respectfully, etc.,
LOVEL H. ROUSSEAU.
Soon after the war General Hobart determined to settle in Milwaukee and begin anew his pro- fessional and business pursuits. He had scarcely settled in his new home and opened an office before he was called upon to mingle again in public affairs. In the fall of 1865 he was again, without solicitation, nominated for governor by his party. He made a spirited canvass, but the Republicans had Gen. Fairchild, a one armed sol- dier, for their candidate, and they were still in- spired with war enthusiasm. Hobart was de- feated by a small majority. In 1867 he was sent to the assembly from the second district of Mil- waukee. In this session he had many important duties to perform. He introduced and carried through a bill prohibiting, forever, the consolida- tion of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul and the Chicago & Northwestern Railroads. He was the author of the bill creating the Milwaukee High School, and was the author of the eight hour law. He created a political sensation, that ses- sion, by supporting in a strong, patriotic states- manlike speech, the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. This he did in face of the opposition of his party. His address on that occasion was one of the ablest delivered in his long public career. A few extracts are proper here. He said : "I am a Democrat and I have always supposed that it was the mission of Dem- ocracy to protect the rights of the poor and the
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weak. Democracy took the foreign immigrants by the hand and gave them not only civil rights but the elective franchise. But the Democracy got contaminated by its connection with the Southern slave holders. I propose to maintain the ground of the ancient Democracy when it was true to Democratic principles, and to move to the front and take the Democrats with me. Democrats will always be in the minority in this country if they sympathize with the oppressors of mankind. It is because of the past connection of the Demo- cratic party with those who held men as property and its sympathies with traitors against the gov- ernment that it has been beaten in every Northern state ; and unless it severs its connection with this class and maintains true Democratic princi- ples it deserves to be beaten." He closed with this sentiment, which was received with pro- longed applause. "For me, whatever others may do, I shall stand upon the platform of equal rights to all men without regard to color, race or creed." That speech had more to do with leading the Democratic party of Wisconsin to accept the re- sults of the war than anything else that had been uttered in the state.
In 1868 Gen. Hobart opened a law office in Washington and was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court, the late Chief Justice E. G. Ryan making the motion. He was not well satisfied with life in Washington, and in due time returned to Milwaukee, was admitted to the Common Council, chosen as president, and was acting mayor for a time ; has been president of the Public Library Association, with which he is still connected, and for years was a School Commis- sioner. For a long time he has managed the exten- sive real estate business of the late Alexander Mitchell, and has performed similar duties for his son, Senator John L. Mitchell. He has ever been a true friend to the cause of popular education. Probably no service, outside of that he rendered in the army, has been of greater value to the state than his life-long interest in and work for our educational system. As trustee and presi- dent of the Milwaukee Public Library it can be said that he has done more for the npbuilding of that enterprise-that every citizen may well be proud of-than any other person in Milwaukee. Not another man in Wisconsin can be named whose career has extended over as large a part of the state's history, whose name is more closely and
creditably identified with the events of the last half century. His record as a citizen, a public officer, a soldier, a lawyer, are above reproach, all doing honor to him. The heart, the mind and the hand of no other man ever exerted greater influence on the laws and customs and the inter- est of Wisconsin. Unselfish, a ways delighting in needed unselfish services for friends, city, state and country, it is not strange that wherever his name is mentioned in the state he has been a resident of for fifty years, there are scores to step forward and speak in praise of this friend to humanity, this friend to Wisconsin, this patriot and lover of his country.
Gen. Hobart is a member of E. B. Wolcott Post No. 1, Milwaukee, and of Wisconsin Com- mandery of the Loyal Legion. He is also a Mason. He has been twice married. First, February 2, 1854, to Miss Frances Imogen Low- rey, of Troy, New York, who died in 1855. His present wife was Mrs. Anna Clarence Mower, of Boston, whom he married June 8, 1857.
ASAHEL FINCH, who passed away . April 4, 1883, was at the time of his death a member of the oldest law firm at the Milwaukee bar, his partnership with William Pitt Lynde being proba- bly the longest continued law partnership in the history of the western bar. Entered into in 1842, the partnership between Mr. Finch and Mr. Lynde continued uninterruptedly for more than forty years, each of the partners achieving unusual distinction at the bar of Milwaukee and attaining a high rank among the lawyers of the state. Mr. Finch, who was a native of New York state, was born at Genoa, Cayuga county, February 14, 1809, and came of as brave and hardy a race of pioneers as ever contributed to the upbuilding of new communities or commonwealths. As early as 1632, according to the Genealogical Dictionary of New England, three brothers of that name, who were of English antecedents, were among the Freemen then settled at Wethersfield, Con- necticut. While a link of family history is mis- sing, the presumption is strong that among their descendents were the Finches whose names appear on the historic monument at Wyoming, Pennsyl- vania, erected in memory of those who fell vic- tims to the English and Indian invaders, in the bloody massacre which took place there during the Revolutionary War. Asahel Finch, Jr., was a grandson of one of the patriot pioneers who
A Hunch
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gave up his life for the cause of liberty and nat- ional independence, at Wyoming, and it is not in- appropriate in this connection to sketch briefly the history of a struggle with which they were identified, and which constitutes an unique chapter of American history.
It was in the middle of the last century that the since far-famed Wyoming Valley first began to attract the attention of colonists, and without at- tempting to give more than a bare statement of facts, interesting in this connection because of their bearing on the family history of a Milwau- kee pioneer, it may be said that in the struggle alluded to, there was a conflict of charter rights between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Con- necticut. The Pennsylvania claimants held that the Wyoming Valley and a large area of adjacent territory belonged to them by virtue of a grant of King Charles II., while the Connecticut claimants insisted that the same territory was included in the charter limits of Connecticut, also by grant of King Charles II. It had been regularly conveyed by the Connecticut colonial government to what was known as the Connecticut-Susquehanna Com- pany, and that company claimed to have complied with all the requirements essential to the acquisi- tion of a perfect title. Both sets of claimants had gone through the form of extinguishing the Indian title to the lands in question, and both held deeds showing that they had purchased the lands from the noble Red men, who appear to have been willing to sell the same property as often as they could find purchasers for it.
The Delawares and Shawnees occupied the country when the attention of the whites was first attracted to it, but they occupied it by suf- ferance, or rather by direction of the Five Na- tions, who claimed to be the rightful owners. The Great Head or council of united chiefs at Onondaga had directed that the Delawares should remove from their old location at the forks of the Delaware river to "Wayomick;" and when the de- pendent Indians had ventured to protest mildly against this arbitrary decision of their 'hard masters,' the imperious command to move at once had been given by a venerable chieftain, who ad- dressed them at a public conference after this fashion: "We conquered you and made women of vou. For these reasons we charge you to remove instantly. We give you no liberty to think about it. We lift up the remaining Delawares and set
them down in Wayomick; for there is a fire kin- dled for them, and there they may plant and think on God; but if they will not hear, the Great Head will come and clean their ears with a red hot iron."
Both the Pennsylvania " proprietaries " and the Connecticut-Susquehanna Company had purchased from the Iroquois Confederacy their rights and title to the Wyoming Valley, and both firmly and honestly believed themselves entitled by charter rights, and rights acquired from the Indians to take possession of the territory. In 1768 the Con- necticut Company, after having made one or two abortive attempts prior to that time to start set- tlements at Wyoming, determined to establish a colony at that place. At a meeting held at Hart- ford it was resolved that five townships, five miles square, should be surveyed and granted each to forty settlers, being proprietors, on condi- tion that those settlers should man their rights and defend themselves and each other from the intrusion of all rival claimants.
The first forty of the pioneers set out for their new homes without delay and arrived at Wyom- ing in the middle of February, 1769, to find that the rival Pennsylvania claimants were on the ground ahead of them. Then commenced the strife for possession of the valley which was known in the early history of our country as the Penny- mite-Yankee War. From that time on for a score of years the Yankees and the Pennymites were alternately in possession of the coveted lands and there were numberless conflicts and no small number of bloody battles between them. A com- mission created for the purpose of examining into the controversy, finally affirmed the right of Pennsylvania to the disputed territory, and har- mony was restored in 1788 through the course pursued by the government of the Keystone state, which allowed the Connecticut settlers to retain their land holdings under the jurisdiction of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The Finches were among those who went into the Wyoming Valley from Connecticut and were settled there when Col. John Butler, with his British soldiers and Indian allies, swept down upon them to inaugurate a reign of terror. A large proportion of the colonists, "capable of bearing arms" had been drawn into the revolutionary struggle, as regular soldiers, and only a small band was available for the defense of the settlement against the invaders. When they had suffered
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the defeat which was inevitable, an indiscriminate slaughter, to which the British commander was indifferent, or which he was powerless to suppress, took place, and small was the number of those fortunate enough to escape the tomahawk of the savages and make their way to places of safety. In this fiery ordeal the ancestors of Mr. Finch were tried, and driven out of the Wyoming Val- ley, a remnant of the family settled in New York state. There Asahel Finch, Sr., father of the sub- ject of this sketch, grew to manhood and married Elizabeth Gilbert. Brought up in the midst of those rural environments which seem to contribute in a remarkable degree to the development of the best type of American manhood, inheriting from his an- cestry high courage and indomitable will power, Asahel Finch, Jr., was admirably fitted by nature for an active and useful career among the pioneers of the Northwest. His early education was re- ceived in the common schools of the neighborhood in which he was brought up, and in his young manhood he attended school at Middlebury Academy in Genesee county.
He was married in 1830 near Rochester, New York, to Miss Mary De Forest Bristol, a native of Connecticut, and almost immediately thereafter was carried westward with the tide of iminigra- tion as far as Michigan. Locating at Tecumseh, he engaged for three years in merchandising, when, having a strong liking for the law, remov- ing from there to Adrain, he entered the office of Orange Butler of that city as a law student in 1834. While reading law he took an active inter- est in public affairs, was elected to the Michigan legislature, and while serving in that body aided materially in bringing about a settlement of the boundary line dispute, between Michigan and Ohio, which at one time threatened to involve the two states in armed conflict.
After a systematic and thorough course of study he was admitted to the bar in 1838. In the fall of the following year he came to Milwaukee and be- gan his professional career here, a well-seasoned and well-informed man, whose experience as a man of affairs had added materially to his qualifi- cations for successful practice. For a short time he was associated professionally with H. N. Wells and Col. Hans Crocker, under the firm name of Wells, Crocker & Finch, and his first change of associates resulted in the formation of the partner- ship with Mr. Lynde, which continued up to the
date of his death, B. K. Miller and H. M. Finch becoming partners in the firm in 1857, the firm thus constituted continuing in existence twenty- seven years under the name of Finches, Lynde & Miller-a name still retained by Mr. Miller and his associates.
It is the judgment and testimony of Mr. Finch's professional contemporaries, only a few of whom are now living, that the firm of which he was for more than forty years the head had, during his life, as large, varied and important a law practice as any firm in the state or within the broader limits of the Northwest. The books of the firm, still preserved, testify to the fact that during the four decades of his active practice the firm had to do with more than ten thousand suits in courts of record, many of them involving large amounts of money, valuable property interests and import- ant questions of law. Of Mr. Finch's character and ability as a lawyer and his worth as a man and a citizen, no more correet estimate could be made than found expression in the closing words of a sketch of his career presented to the Wiscon- sin State Historical Society. Writing of him in this connection, one who had known him inti- mately for many years said: "For over forty years Mr. Finch was in constant and successful practice, meeting not only all the able lawyers in the West as opponents at the bar, but some of the most distinguished members of the legal profession from the East who had been sent to Wisconsin to look after the interests of non-resident clients. He seldom found himself overmatched. He was always regarded as an able and upright lawyer, with such a sense of justice, such a conscientious regard for the right, and such a strict fidelity to the highest ideals, that it was said of him that no amount of money could secure his services for the wrong side. His professional habit gave the lie to the oft-repeated assertion that a lawyer can be hired to undertake any kind of a case provided the fee is large enough. He had no sliding scale of morality that excused a member of the legal profession for doing what was considered dishon- orable in other men. If the law made it a crime to secrete stolen goods, he held it to be wrong to aid the real thief to escape by the technicalities and loop-holes of the statute. He was one of the kind that could not be hired to defend a confessed criminal to defeat the ends of justice. His con- ception of the proper function of jurisprudence in
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modern civilization was to secure the highest good attainable by organized society.
" He had such an extensive practice that his clients were not impoverished by his charges after he had won their suits. He often refused to prose- cute poor men. He aided in the settlement of more disputes by arbitration outside of the courts than any other man ever in practice in Milwaukee. He often put aside large prospective fees for him- self and his firm by advising belligerent litigants to keep out of court. Had Diogenes gone among the members of the bar with his lantern, in search of an honest lawyer, he would have put out his light and returned home satisfied after meeting Asahel Finch.
"Although Mr. Finch was long recognized as the head of the most important law firm west of the great lakes, and was familiarly called the father of the Wisconsin bar, he was not so much en- grossed with the responsible duties of his profes- sion that he did not promptly discharge every ob- ligation that was laid upon him as a citizen of the city and state. When he came to Milwaukee in 1839, the population of the territory was no more than is now contained by one of a dozen Wiscon- sin towns outside of Milwaukee; and the villages of Juneau and Kilbourn combined did not number as many souls as now find their homes in any of the eighteen wards in the city. Every- thing pertaining to a civilized community and statehood was in embryo. Wisconsin was not ad- mitted into the Union until nine years later. In politics he was a Whig, being once the Whig can- didate for Congress, and he always adhered to that party until it was dissolved after the disas- trous defeat of Gen. Winfield Scott in the well- remembered campaign of 1852. He aided in the formation of the Republican party when the attempt was made to carry slavery into the new territories of the West, under the Dred-Scott de- cision of the Supreme Court and the repeal of the Missouri compromise act, and supported John C. Fremont for president in 1856. And when the South finally rebelled and attempted to dissolve the Union by an appeal to the bloody arbitrament of thesword, Mr. Finch supported the government with voice, pen and purse to the best of his ability.
"When Mr. Finch settled in Milwaukee, religious societies were to be organized out of the discordant elements that are always present in new countries; churches were to be built with the scanty funds gathered by the contribution box ; preachers were
sent out by home missionary societies at the East, and the slow and tedious process of laying the foundations of a great commonwealth was com- menced. In all this grand work Asahel Finch took an active and prominent part. Probably it is safe to say that no layman ever set foot on the soil of Wisconsin, who helped the churches of all denominations, in proportion to his means, as liberally as he. In the church he was quite as conspicuous as at the bar. He was an early com- municant of the Plymouth Church of Milwaukee, and for forty years was its steadfast friend, through all its vicissitudes and trials, supporting it cheerfully with voice and material aid. Al- though a strict Congregationalist and a staunch defender of its Democratic form of church govern- ment, he was neither bigot nor partisan in religion, but recognized the upright man as his brother, no matter how much his creed differed from his own. His donations for the support of religion were scattered freely among all evan- gelical denominations that needed help, and many an impoverished society was indebted to his generosity for assistance in time of keen distress. His public benefactions did not divert his atten- tion from the claims of the destitute in the hum- blest walks of life. He delighted in relieving the wants of the poor without letting one hand know what the other did. His good deeds are not all known except to the God whom he tried to serve; And like Abou Ben Adhem, he served Him best by ' loving his fellowmen.' He never asked ' Who is my neighbor ?' nor 'Am I my brother's keeper?' but tried 'the luxury of doing good.' In the dark and cruel days of slavery his ear was ever open to the cry of the black man in bond- age, and he became an active director on the underground railway, whose terminus was on Mason and Dixon's line in the South and in Canada on the North. Many a trembling fugitive, fleeing from his cruel taskmaster, was aided on his hazard- ous journey toward the north star, by a friend on the shore of Lake Michigan, whose name he had never heard. He remembered those in bonds as bound with them. In short, he followed in the footsteps of his Master as nearly as he could."
That the pioneers of Milwaukee were men of strong character and of far more than ordinary ability is a fact which impresses itself upon every student of the city's history, and in this commun- ity Asahel Finch for many years wielded a
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commanding influence. Quiet and mild mannered in his demeanor, he was resolute, forceful, earnest and notable among his contemporaries for his capacity for organized and systematic effort. His public-spirited interest in everything calcu- lated to develop and build up the city was a marked feature of his career, and he was one of the most prominent of the men who conceived the idea of building the pioneer railway of Wisconsin, secured the charter authorizing its construction, and in various ways materially aided the enter- prise. Generous in his impulses, philanthropic by nature, and kindly in his intercourse with all classes of people, his beneficent existence was one to be contemplated with pleasure, and studied with profit by the present generation of his suc- cessors at the bar and in other walks of life.
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