USA > Wisconsin > Milwaukee County > Memoirs of Milwaukee County : from the earliest historical times down to the present, including a genealogical and biographical record of representative families in Milwaukee County, Volume I > Part 58
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west, and in company with Prof. Henry L. Low, of Geneva College, came to Milwaukee in the summer of that year. After stopping a short time in Milwaukee he and his companion pushed out into the interior, and after visiting Nashotah traversed a large area of country then in a condition of primitive wildness, traveling by stage, wagons, in boats, or on foot, as occasion necessitated or their pleasure dictated. Deciding to establish a private academy in Milwaukee, Mr. McGregor went back to New York, returning in November of that year with his family, to begin a residence in Wisconsin which was almost continuous up to the time of his death, which occurred in 1895. In company with Prof. Low he erected an academy building on Jackson street, and for a year or more gave to this enterprise the greater share of his time and attention. Owing to the fact that Milwaukee was then so young a city, that there were comparatively few pupils sufficiently advanced to enter upon the higher education, for which the academy provided, the enterprise did not prove satisfactory, and in 1847 Mr. McGregor turned his attention to the practice of law and continued his professional work until 1854, when the impairment of his health caused him to remove temporarily to Ottawa, Ill., where for a year and a half he engaged in farming. In the fall of 1855, at the solicitation of friends who were largely interested in the banking business, . he removed to Portage, Wis., and for the next five years engaged in banking at that place. Still retaining his banking interests in Portage, he returned to Milwau- kee in 1860 and resumed the practice of law, first as a partner of James Howe, at that time attorney-general of the state, and later as a partner of the distinguished jurist, E. G. Ryan. Various enterprises in which he was engaged, however, engrossed his attention to such a degree that he abandoned the practice of his profession after a few years and never returned to it. He was interested at a later date in manufacturing and commercial establishments in Chicago, and in 1870 removed to that city. He returned to Milwaukee in 1874 at the solici- tation of Alexander Mitchell and E. D. Holton, to become first assistant general manager and later secretary of the Northwestern National In- surance Company, a position that he retained until his death. In the early history of the Republican party in this state he was one of the men who helped to formulate its policies and aided in the selection of leaders who acquired national prominence. In 1857 he was a candidate on the Republican ticket for State Bank Comptroller, and later served for a time as assistant comptroller. He was also one of the commis- sioners having charge of the building of the asylum for insane at Madi- son, served as mayor of Portage while living in that city, and was for several years a master in chancery and court commissioner of Milwau-
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kee. During the later years of his life he was an independent in poli- tics, his tariff views being at variance with the platform utterances and legislative enactments of the Republican party.
Mr. McGregor's first association for the practice of law was with Henry W. Tenney, and this partnership continued until 1854, when both left the city. Mr. Tenney went to Portage, and later to Chicago, where for several years he was associated with his brother, Daniel K. Tenney, in the practice of his profession. He afterward became a resident of Appleton, Wis. Norman J. Emmons and John H. Van Dyke removed from Detroit, Mich., in 1847, and commenced practice as the firm of Emmons & Van Dyke. They were young men, able and well-equipped, and held a conspicuous place in the professional and business life of the city for more than twenty-five years. Mr. Van Dyke turned his practice over to his sons, G. Douglas and William D. Van Dyke, a number of years ago. Mr. Emmons retired from active practice about the year 1880, and soon afterward returned to Michigan, where he died. In 1847, came also James H. Paine from Painesville, in Northern Ohio, with his two sons, Hortensius and Byron Paine, the last named being at that time but twenty years of age. The father was a sincere and outspoken abolitionist, and his sons were both by inheritance and education strong and uncompromising opponents of human slavery and of all means employed for its extension or support. Byron was admitted to the bar in 1849, and the firm of J. H. Paine & Sons practiced in a modest way until 1854, when the attempt to enforce the fugitive slave law of 1850 in Milwaukee, in the case of the negro, Glover, awakened and called into energetic action, intellectual power and forensic ability of the modest young man of twenty-six, the exist- ence of which had been little suspected. Thomas L. Ogden came to the city in 1848, from New York city. He became a member of the firm of Holliday, Brown & Ogden, and after the death of Mr. Holliday, in 1851, continued with James S. Brown in practice as the firm of Brown & Ogden for ten years or more. Later the firm was Ogden & Pratt. Mr. Ogden gave special attention to the law of real estate and to causes in equity, and in both branches of the practice was able and successful.
Milwaukee furnished the first attorney-general of the state, in 1848, in the person of James S. Brown. His successor, S. Park Coon, also a member of the Milwaukee bar, was elected in 1849. Mr. Coon was a native of New York and had been a resident of the city for several years. He was subsequently district attorney of the county in 1864 and 1865, and was employed for several years in the futile effort to se- cure through the legislature and courts the release from their obliga-
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tions of the farmers and others who had mortgaged their lands to aid in building railroads in the state. The bar of Milwaukee received many accessions in 1849. Among those who settled in the city during that year were Daniel R. Chandler, Harlow S. Orton, Charles K. Wells, Edward G. Ryan, Henry L. Palmer, Myron H. Orton, Arthur MacAr- thur, Charles K. Watkins, Otis H. Waldo, Burr W. Griswold, Winfield Smith and John J. Orton, and all of those named were for longer or shorter periods conspicuous in the active practice of their profession. Mr. Chandler was advanced in years, but had ranked well, especially as a solicitor in chancery, in western New York. He was actively em- ployed in important equity suits for a few years after he came to Mil- waukee, and served as official reporter of the supreme court of the state from 1848 to 1853. Harlow S. Orton remained in Milwaukee but a few years and removed to Madison, where he resided with brief in- terruptions until his death, July 4, 1895. In 1865 he was associated with his brother, John J. Orton, in the practice in Milwaukee. H represented Madison in the state assembly in 1854, 1859 and 1871, was circuit judge of his circuit from 1860 to 1865, became an associate jus- tice of the supreme court, April 18, 1878, and was a member of that court as long as he lived, being chief justice at the time of his death.
Charles K. Wells was a native of Waterville, Maine, and was born on Dec. 22, 1817. He attended school there, entered Waterville Col- lege, now Colby University, in September, 1838, and remained there two years, then entered Yale College and graduated in 1842. After teaching for a few weeks in the academy at St. Albans, Maine, he went to Virginia and spent two years as a teacher at Coal Mines, about ten miles west of Richmond. In January, 1845. he went to Daggers Springs, Botetourt county, Va., where he taught for a few months and at the same time commenced the study of law. He subsequently pur- sued his studies at Fincastle in the same county, entering as student the law office of Alexander P. Eskridge. He was admitted to the bar in Virginia on Jan. 21. 1846, and soon afterward commenced the practice of his profession at Rocky Mount, Franklin county, Va. He remained there until April, 1847, when he removed to Milwaukee, where he continued the practice of law until his death, which occurred in 1893. Soon after his arrival here he entered into partnership with Joel W. Hemenway and Franklin Ripley, Jr., for the practice of law and the examination of titles to real estate, under the firm name of Hemenway. Ripley & Wells. In 1849 the firm was dissolved. and in December, 1852, he formed a law partnership with Jerome R. Brigham, which continued until his death, becoming one of the oldest law partnerships in the city. In 1880 Horace A. J. Upham was admitted to the firm
35.
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and the firm name was changed to Wells, Brigham & Upham. Mr. Wells was appointed postmaster at Milwaukee by President Lincoln, and filled that position from June 1, 1864, to Oct. 6, 1866, at which time President Johnson required his removal. His partner, Mr. Brigham, became a member of the Milwaukee bar in 1852, after serving from August, 1848, to December, 1851, as clerk of the supreme court of the state.
Edward G. Ryan was born in Ireland in 1810, and came to Amer- ica before reaching his majority. He had received a collegiate educa- tion and some legal training in the land of his birth; was admitted to the bar in Chicago in 1836; for a few years was employed in editorial work and as law clerk, and in 1841 was prosecuting attorney. Remov- ing in 1842 from Chicago to Racine, he engaged earnestly in law prac- tice, and in 1846 became a member of the first constitutional conven- tion, where his extraordinary intellectual powers began to attract public attention. In 1848 he was sent as a delegate to the Democratic national convention, and in the same year he removed from Racine to Milwau- kee. From this time until his death his professional and judicial rec- ord are part of the history of the Milwaukee bar. He was associated at different times during his professional career in Milwaukee, as partner, with former Chief Justice A. W. Stowe of the supreme court, with J. R. Brigham, with James G. Jenkins, with Matthew H. Carpenter. with John P. McGregor and others. In the year 1871, he accepted the office of city attorney, which he held until June 17, 1874, when Governor Taylor appointed him chief justice of the supreme court in place of Judge Dixon, resigned. This office he retained by election until his death, Oct. 19, 1880. His opinion in the "Granger cases," so-called, decided in 1875, in which the power of the legislature to regulate rail- road tariffs was maintained, is a masterly discussion of legal and con- stitutional principles. During the time Judge Ryan was on the Su- preme Bench the decisions handed down from it placed the Wisconsin court foremost among the judicial tribunals of American states.
Myron H. Orton was a native of Madison county, N. Y. Remov- ing to Ohio when young, he graduated at Kenyon College, studied law and located at Laporte, Ind., where he engaged in the practice until he located in Milwaukee, in 1849, then thirty-nine years of age. He remained here, being associated part of the time with Charles E. Jenkins, until 1853, when he removed to Madison and there contin- ued in practice until his death in 1860. Charles K. Watkins was from Waterloo, N. Y., where he had been a practicing lawyer several years before removing to Wisconsin. In 1857 he took an active part with other citizens in the preparation of amendments to the charter of the
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city, intended to remedy existing municipal abuses. During the few years preceding his death his attention was largely given to the inter- ests of the Milwaukee & Chicago Railway Company, builder of the Lake Shore railroad from the city of Milwaukee to the Illinois state line, of which company he was a director and at the time of his death president. He died in 1858.
Otis H. Waldo was born in Prattsburg, N. Y., in 1822, and graduated at Union College in 1842 with high honors. Soon there- after, his health being poor, he located in Natchez, Miss., and there studied law and was admitted to the bar. The institutions of the South were so distasteful to him that he determined to find more congenial surroundings in the West. His professional career in Milwaukee was highly honorable and successful. He was much and actively interested in public affairs, rendering most valuable service in effecting a re- adjustment of the heavy indebtedness of the city in 1862, and the es- tablishment of its credit upon a sound basis. His death, Oct. 30, 1874, at the age of fifty-two, from nervous prostration, was due to excessive and unremitting work.
Winfield Smith engaged in practice in Milwaukee at the age of twenty-two, having graduated at the university of Michigan and read law with Judge Christiancy of that state. In 1855 he formed a law partnership with Edward Salomon, which continued until the latter re- moved to the city of New York in 1870. The office of governor of the state having devolved upon Mr. Salomon-who had been elected lieu- tenant-governor in 1861-by the untimely death of Governor Harvey, Mr. Smith was appointed by him attorney-general of the state to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Hon. James H. Howe, and in 1863 he was elected to the same office for the full term expiring Jan. I, 1866. Mr. Smith was also a member of the assembly in 1872, and was subsequently associated in law practice with Joshua Stark from 1869 until 1875, and afterward with Matthew H. Carpenter and A. A. L. 'Smith, as the firm of Carpenter & Smiths. He continued in active prac- tice until about the year 1890, when he retired, after an active profes- sional life of more than forty years.
John J. Orton was born in the town of Brookfield, Madison coun- ty, N. Y., April 25, 1812. His father, Harlow N. Orton, was a member of the medical profession, and in the year 1817 removed with his family to the town of Cambria, Niagara county, N. Y., as one of the pioneer settlers of that part of the Holland purchase. It was in the district schools that young Orton received the rudiments of his education. At the age of eleven years he became a clerk in a drygoods .and drug store at Albion, Orleans county, N. Y., and remained with his
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first employer until he became interested in the business as partner at the age of eighteen years. Partially fitting himself for college while thus engaged in business, he disposed of his interests and finished his course of preparation at Middlebury, Vt. Entering then upon a classical course at Yale College, at the end of four years he graduated with honor, afterward read law and was admitted to the bar in the city of New York. He then formed business connections with Hon. Isaac Sherman, to manage the entire lumber interests of Deroitt & Company, of Albany, and located at Buffalo, N. Y., there to buy and forward all the lumber of that market. Finally deciding to make Milwaukee his home, in 1850 he became a member of the firm of Orton, Cross & Orton, engaged in the practice of the law. In 1865 he was for a time associated with his brother, Harlow S. Orton, and in 1873-74 with Edward G. Ryan. The end of Mr. Orton's busy life came quietly on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 24, 1885.
Matthew H. Carpenter, Edward Salomon, Halbert E. Paine, and others are given prominent mention on other pages of this work. It will now be well to mention some of those who, after spending a few years in legal practice in Milwaukee, removed to other cities and there gained honorable distinction.
Burr W. Griswold, who came from New York in 1849, and was for three or four years associated with Francis Randall in practice. returned to New York about the year 1854 and was for years a member of the distinguished law firm of Blatchford, Seward & Griswold. John R. Sharpstein was, for many years prior to 1865, prominent in the po- litical and professional life of the city. He was district attorney of the United States from 1854 to 1857, and afterward a member of the law firm of Palmer & Sharpstein, editor of the leading Democratic jour- nal, superintendent of schools, postmaster, and member of the state legislature. In 1865 he removed to California, and there, having served a few years as district judge, became in 1880 a justice of the supreme court, and remained on the bench until his death in 1893. Orlando L. Stewart tried the west a few years, beginning with 1850. In 1856 he was associated with Francis Bloodgood, practicing as the firm of Stew- art & Bloodgood. Later he returned to New York, his former home, where his career became highly successful. Wheeler H. Peckham, of New York, was law partner with Mr. Bloodgood in 1859. After a brief residence in Milwaukee he too returned to New York, where his distinguished professional labors as prosecutor of the Tweed ring. and in many other celebrated cases, gave him national fame. Wallace Pratt came to the Milwaukee bar early in 1857. In 1858 he was asso-
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ciated as partner with Ephraim Mariner. Early in 1859, he became a partner of John W. Cary, and a few years later was a member of the law firm of Ogden & Pratt. About the year 1870 he removed to Kan- sas City, and there became prominent and successful as attorney for railroads and other corporations. Nelson C. Gridley, after practicing law in Milwaukee several years, being for a time associated with Mat- thew H. Carpenter. removed to Chicago, where he became engaged in successful practice as a patent lawyer. Edwin L. Buttrick practiced law in Milwaukee from 1855 to 1862. and was a member of the firm of Butler, Buttrick & Cottrill. He entered the army in the fall of 1862 as lientenant-colonel of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin infantry. After the war he took up his residence in West Virginia, where he became prominent as a lawyer and a citizen.
William G. Whipple, a native of Connecticut and a graduate of the Wesleyan University and of the Albany Law School, came to Milwaukee in 1859 and remained until about 1865 in legal practice, part of the time with Walter S. Carter in the firm of Carter & Whipple. From Milwaukee he removed to Arkansas, where he became an active and leading Republican, served as United States district attorney and as mayor of the city of Little Rock, and was at one time the Republican candidate for governor of the state. E. P. Smith read law with Finch & Lynde in Milwaukee, and was admitted to the bar in 1849. With David S. Ordway he practiced for several years in Beaver Dam, Dodge county. Both removed to Milwaukee and were for a time associated with Ephraim Mariner, in the firm of Mariner, Smith & Ordway. Mr. Smith, after years of assiduous professional labor here, removed to Omaha, where he became engaged as one of the attorneys of the Union Pacific Railroad Company. John B. D. Cogswell was a member of the Milwaukee bar from December. 1857, for several years. During the years 1862 to 1867 he held the office of United States district attor- ney. Not long afterward, he returned to Massachusetts, the state in which he had formerly resided, and later served in the legislature of that commonwealth. Walter S. Carter came from Connecticut in 1858, entered upon the practice of law in Milwaukee in May of that year, and was afterward associated with Frederick W. Pitkin and De Witt Davis. During the war he engaged actively in the work of the Christian Commission, and later removed to the city of New York, where he engaged in practice, giving special attention to the depart- ment of commercial law. His partner, Frederick W. Pitkin, practiced in Milwaukee from October, 1859, until 1874, when he removed to the State of Colorado in search of a climate more favorable to his health. His superior qualities as man and lawyer, in Colorado as in Mil-
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waukee, won him deserved popularity and led to his election to the office of governor of that state by the largest majority ever given to a Re- publican candidate there up to that time, 1878. He was re-elected in 1880, and in 1882 was an active candidate for the United States senate, at the preliminary caucus of his party receiving more votes than any other candidate, but not a majority, and on failing to secure an election he again took up the practice of his profession at Pueblo, Col., and the care of his large mining interests. He died on Dec. 18, 1886.
Cushman K. Davis, now deceased, who later became a prominent member of the United States senate, representing the state of Minnesota, read law with the firm of Butler & Winkler in the city of Milwaukee, and was there admitted to the bar and began practice, removing from this city to St. Paul about the year 1865. Joshua La Due was at the bar in Milwaukee for a number of years, beginning his practice here in 1863. During a part of that time he was a member of the firm of Downer, La Due & Jenkins, and served several years as city attorney. James MacAllister, born and educated in Glasgow, Scotland, studied law at the Albany Law School, and after spending several years as principal of one of the public schools of Milwaukee, entered the legal profession in February, 1865, and continued in practice for nearly ten years. A decided preference for literary pursuits led him, in 1874, to accept the position of superintendent of schools, which he held until 1883, with the exception of an interval of two years. In 1883 he was selected by the board of education of Philadelphia to superintend the public schools of that city, and after several years' service in that position he was honored by appointment to the position of president of the Drexel Institute of that city. Henry H. Markham became a member of the Milwaukee bar in February, 1867, and practiced law here with his brother, George C. Markham, until 1878, giving special attention to causes in admiralty with marked success. For necessary change of climate he then removed to Pasadena, Cal., and was later honored with a term as governor of that state, and also a term as rep- resentative of his district in Congress.
Luther S. Dixon, for many years chief justice of the supreme court of the state, upon his retirement from the bench in 1874, located in Milwaukee and engaged in active practice of the legal profession, being for a time senior member of the firm of Dixon, Hooker, Wegg & Noyes. As special counsel for the state in the "Granger Cases," in 1874 and 1875. and for the United States in the prosecution of the distillers and revenue officers of the Milwaukee district. in 1875 and 1876, for criminal violation of the laws relating to internal revenue, he exhibited marked ability. After a successful practice of six years
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at this bar, he was forced by considerations of health to seek a friend- lier climate, and removed to Denver, Colo., where he continued in prac- tice until his death, in 1893. David S. Wegg, one of the early partners of Judge Dixon in Milwaukee, became for a time assistant to John W. Cary, the general solicitor of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company, and was later appointed general solicitor of the Wisconsin Central Railway Company. When the general offices of the latter company were removed to Chicago, Mr. Wegg took up his resi- dence in that city, where he became closely identified with the interests of the company and with various enterprises of those in its control. John W. Carey, the general solicitor of the St. Paul Railway Company from its organization in 1863, also removed to Chicago when the head- quarters of the company were transferred to that city, and continued its honored and trusted legal adiser until his death in 1895. Burton Hanson and H. H. Field, who began their professional careers in Mil- waukee and had for several years given able and faithful service to the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company, under Mr. Cary, went with him to Chicago, where they won high positions at the bar, and in the confidence of their client.
Among the other prominent lawyers, the greater number of whom are deceased, though a few of them are still in active practice, are the following: Ephriam Mariner, Frank B. Van Valkenberg. J. V. V. Platto, Frederick W. Cotzhausen. De Witt Davis, Henry M. Finch, Erastus Foote, George W. Lakin, Mitchell Steever, Jedd P. C. Cottrill, George A. Starkweather, David G. Hooker, James Hickcox, C. K. Martin, Nathan Pereles, Theodore B. Eliott, George B. Goodwin, Joshua Stark, Francis Bloodgood, David S. Ordway, B. Kurz Miller, Frederick C. Winkler, Daniel G. Rogers, S. W. Granger, E. E. Chapin, Alfred L. Cary, Jared Thompson, Jr., Samuel Howard, Frederick Riet- brock, George C. Markham, James G. Flanders, George Sylvester and Gerry W. Hazelton.
Henry Martyn Finch was one of the young men who became iden- tified with the Milwaukee bar between 1850 and 1860, who achieved unusual distinction in later years. He was born at Parma Corners, Monroe county, New York, Dec. 15, 1829, and soon afterward his father, who was a merchant, moved to Michigan and located at Tecum- sel1. When he was eight years of age his mother died, and he became a pupil, and also a member of the household of Rev. Mr. Blood, well- known as one of the pioneer ministers of Michigan and Ohio. Mr. Finch came to Milwaukee first about 1846, and after spending some time here with his uncle, was sent to Madison, where another uncle (Cullen Finch) was engaged in commercial pursuits. A limited expe-
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