Perry County, Indiana - Chapter 14: Lawyers, Judges and First Newspapers, 1916

At the May term, 1846, Judge Embree was succeeded by Hon. James Lockhart, of Vanderburg County, who had already become one of the foremost lawyers in Southern Indiana, so that his elevation to the bench of the Fourth Judicial Circuit was a deserved tribute to his ability.

For several years an indictment for kidnapping had been standing on the court docket of Perry County against Benjamin S. Harrison and William B. Harrison, reciting that they had forcibly taken a free negro named Thomas, living in the county, had conveyed him into one of the Southern states and sold him as a slave. In 1846 two other free negro residents of Perry County, Abraham and Abigail, were abducted by Nathaniel Dupree - not "Simon Legree" - carried South and sold into slavery.

None of these offenders was ever found by officers or brought to justice. Although slavery was not permitted on Indiana soil, sentiment in the river counties recognized it as a vigourous institution flourishing just over the border, and it was a statutory crime anywhere in the state to harbour fugitive slaves, so that pursuit of Dupree or the Harrisons was regarded as unimportant.

The last in line of associate judges before the office was abolished were: Thomas Tobin, 1837; Stephen Shoemaker, 1838; Amos L. D. Williams, 1844; James Wheeler, 1845 ; John Groves, 1846 ; Daniel Curry, 1851 ; and Samuel Miller, 1851. Among the attorneys admitted were Lemuel Q. De Bruler, George W. Williams and William H. Hanna, 1846 ; Thomas F. DeBruler and

Nathaniel C. Foster, 1847; David T. Laird and James E. Blythe, 1848. These men were all from other counties, though the De Brulers and Laird, who lived in Rockport, were regularly identified with Perry County practice during their generation.

In 1849 Cannelton's first resident lawyer was admitted, Charles H. Mason, who had just taken up his abode there after the customary short period spent in Kentucky. He was a native of New Hampshire (Walpole, his Cheshire County, birthplace, being also General Seth Hunt's home town), belonging to that old Colonial family of the Captain John Mason who with Sir Fernando Gorges had founded, in 1622, the royal province of "Laconia" under charter from James I. It was after a division of this grant that Captain Mason bestowed upon his portion the name New Hampshire, to commemorate the English shire of Hants (Hampshire) where the Masons had long held estates.

Charles Holland Mason, born August 9, 1826, was the son of Joseph and Harriet (Ormsby) Mason, and received a thorough classical education to fit him for the law, a profession for which he seemed to possess a hereditary bent. A near collateral relative, to whom he bore a striking personal resemblance, was the Hon. Jeremiah Mason, of Boston, for many years the law partner of Daniel Webster.

No resident lawyer practicing before the Perry Circuit Court, or upon the Common Pleas bench, where he sat twice during the existence of that court, ever ranked higher than Charles H. Mason. Of distinctively oratorical temperament, profound in legal lore, he was a strong speaker, witty, high-minded and eloquent. He founded Perry County's first newspaper, the Cannelton Economist, in 1849, maintaining it at a remarkable standard while its editor, and in later life was a constant contributor of brilliant miscellany to many journals and some of the best magazines. Under the nom-de-plume of "Sandstone" his writings, purporting to come from Rock Island, were a feature of

Cannelton journalism during the sixties and seventies, along the same line of humourous character sketches which have given "Abe Martin" a place in current literature.

March 21, 1852, in Cannelton, Charles H. Mason was married to Rachel Littell (Huckeby) Wright, a daughter of Joshua B. and Rebecca (Lang) Huckeby, but no children were born to the union, which was of thirty years duration, terminated February 26, 1883, by Mrs. Mason's death. In 1890 Judge Mason, who had continued to reside in Cannelton, was appointed by President Benjamin Harrison as United States Commissioner for the Indian Territory (before the organization of Oklahoma) with headquarters at Vinita, where he died in June, 1894.

In 1850 Thomas 0. Stonements was admitted to practice before the Perry County bar, and the following year the names of William A. Wandell and John W. Grimes were recorded.

In October, 1851, Governor Joseph A. Wright commissioned as successor to Judge Lockhart for the Fourth district circuit, a man whose personal distinction was the highest of any ever wearing judicial ermine or holding aloft the scales of Justice in Perry County, Alvin P. Hovey, of Mount Vernon, a native Indianian whom his fellow citizens delighted to honour, and who at his death forty years later, November 26, 1891, was loyally serving them in the most exalted ofRce within their gift - as Governor of Indiana.

His ability more than sufficed to grasp the most tangled intricacies of law, solving every problem with equity and a conservatism which rigidly sustained the dignity of the bench under all circumstances. Such a standard of authority had not been habitual in nisi prius courts, and while Judge Hovey's personality commanded for itself the highest esteem of all, his natural disposition was better fitted for the Supreme Bench which he later adorned.

War Between the States was that of a brilliant commander; beloved, from his staff -officers down to privates; surpassed by none in patriotic devotion to his state and his country. Recognition of this was made in President Johnson's appointing him Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Peru, where he figured as a polished diplomat, choosing as his First Secretary of Legation a young Perry County man, Thomas James de la Hunt, who had previously been a favourite Adjutant on his staff.

Burwell B. Lea was prosecuting attorney in 1848, living at Rome, and was described as a keen, shrewd lawyer, not particularly well-read but so fluent before a jury that his clients with little of law or equity in their favour were frequently rewarded by a far greater success than they had reason to anticipate.

William A. Wandell, of Cannelton, admitted in 1851, was probably an abler man, though of somewhat the same type, and obtained his first prominence in the criminal court of Hancock County, Kentucky, where he assisted in defending the notorious Robert and Moses Kelly.

These two brothers were hanged in Hawesville in the spring of 1853, after a trial which found them guilty of brutally murdering three men - Gardner, Miller and an unidentified deckhand, Friday night, October 22, 1852, on board the fiatboat Eliza No. 2, tied up near Thompson's Ferry, between Troy and Lewisport, Their execution was the first ever held anywhere near and was witnessed by thousands of spectators, so that it became a standard by which all other public gatherings were measured for years afterward, and "the biggest crowd since the Kellys were hung" became an oft-repeated saying.

Judge Hovey was the last President Judge who sat between Associate Judges upon the bench in Perry County, as the courts of Indiana underwent a radical change by the adoption of the new constitution of 1852. Many of the old common law proceedings were forever dispensed with, and the stream of litigation appears to have flowed in a smoother channel when that class of contentious actions known as "Trespass on the Case," "Trover," "Assumpsit," "Case," and others of similar nature passed from sight.

The present code has been in force since May 9, 1853, upon which date, it has been said, "there were buried beneath reform in pleading and practice the remains of John Doe and Richard Roe, who had been familiar to every lawyer from time immemorial, and had supplied a legal fiction in actions for recovery of real estate, but the new law provided that every case should be prosecuted by the real party in interest, and upon the real party complained of."

John Doe and Richard Roe were mythical personages who had so long appeared as plaintiff and defendant in common law that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. The cheerful alacrity with which John always stepped in to vindicate the alleged right of the man out of possession, and the equal promptness of Richard to insist that the man in possession was the lawful owner and entitled to retain his tenancy, were such that the final leave-taking of these doughty knights-errant of the common law was not free from regret.

With an abolition of these fictions, a modification and simplification of many terms by which land was held in feudal times, much of the intricate learning of the old law has faded away, save as mere matters of history. Those who had studied common law and by long years of practice had become thoroughly imbued with its principles, admired it for its grandeur, wisdom and equality, and because it embodied the right system of social and political economy.

It had been rooted in the experience of ages and its adherents were awe-struck at any attempt to prune it of even the smallest branches. Innovation was regarded as sacrilege by many of the elder practitioners, who refused to become reconciled to the change, and not a few went so far as to abandon the practice of their beloved profession. Subsequent years, however, have proven beyond shadow of doubt that the legislation of 1852 inestimably faciliated the practice of law in Indiana.

Ballard Smith, a native of Durham, Strafford County, New Hampshire (a brother of Hamilton Smith), who had become a resident of Cannelton in 1853, was the first attorney admitted to the Perry County bar under the new code, at the November term, 1853, and was also the last admitted by Judge Hovey.

William E. Niblack became the next circuit judge, in May, 1854, coming from his home in Martin County, where he had practised for only a few years at Dover Hill, and was unusually young to be called to a position of such importance. Notwithstanding his inexperience, he made an excellent judge, as extraordinary common-sense came to his aid when legal lore proved lacking, enabling him to administer equity if not law. Honesty and uprightness, added to kindness and affability were qualities which made friends throughout the circuit, so that he was sent later by his district to Congress, and afterward became an important member of the Indiana Supreme Court.

Another change in ownership of the thousand-acre tract lying along the river northwest of Cannelton, entered 1811 by Nicholas J. Roosevelt but soon transferred to Robert Fulton and held for some thirty years by the Fulton heirs in chancery, brought into Perry County as a distinguished citizen, Elisha Mills Huntington, who had been a resident of Terre Haute since 1822 and who in 1841 had received from President Van Buren his appointment as Judge of the Indiana District Federal Court.

Judge Huntington belonged to that noted Connecticut family which furnished as a Signer of the Declaration of Independence Samuel Huntington, whose name took its place in Indiana history when the county, town-

Elisha Mills Huntington was the youngest son of Nathaniel and Mary (Corning) Huntington, and was born March 27, 1806, in Butternuts, New York, receiving his educational training at Canandaigua. After locating in the Middle West he married, November 3, 1841, Mrs. Susan Mary (Rudd) Fitzhugh, born January 8, 1820. She was a daughter of Dr. Christopher Rudd, of Springfield, Washington County, Kentucky, belonging to an old Maryland family closely related to Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Her mother's name, Ann Benoist Palmer, denotes the Huguenot lineage of Carolina, and John C. Calhoun was a relative through the Caldwell family.

To rare personal beauty, whose charm was famed far beyond the two states of her nativity and adoption, Mrs. Huntington added mental poise and equipment placing her abreast of her husband and in the foremost ranks of Indiana's talented women until the day of her unhappily early death, December 3, 1853. One of her latest activities was heading a movement by which a piece of plate was presented to Robert Dale Owen, of New Harmony, in recognition of his services in protecting the rights of women under the new Constitution, adopted, whereby both sexes were placed on an equal footing of property ownership in Indiana. One dollar was set as the maximum donation, but the superb silver pitcher still treasured by Judge Owen's descendants shows that Indiana's grateful women responded appreciatively to Mrs. Huntington's appeal.

For ten years "Mistletoe Lodge" was a name to conjure with among the country-seats bordering the Ohio River, none on either bank surpassing it in lavish hospitality, princely even when measured by old-school standards. Under the low-pitched roof-tree of the rambling mansion were welcomed many notable personages. Around its mahogany both master and mistress prided themselves upon keeping alive and intensi-

Upon selling these broad acres in 1858 to the Swiss Colonization Society, Judge Huntington again took up his residence in Terre Haute, and the streets of a new town were cut through the forests of "Mistletoe Lodge" whose very site became lost under the sidew'alks and business houses of a later generation.

Some of his children lived in Cannelton for several years during the sixties and seventies, held there by property interests in the American Cannel Coal Company, of which his brother-in-law, Hamilton Smith, was long the president, but Judge Huntington came back no more. Declining health brought about his end, four years after his departure from the riverside retreat of his happiest years, and he died October 26, 1862, at Saint Paul, Minnesota, whither he had gone seeking strength through a change of climate.

His masterly record on the bench was made in a wide field whereof Perry County was but a small fraction, yet to every local enterprise of Cannelton he gave that encouragement so essential to success, and the deepest interest toward furthering its advance. While his charges to grand juries on questions of vital import to the state and country at large brought him a national reputation second to no judge in the Union, he adorned his lofty position by the serene, polished dignity of his manner, no less than by his commanding talent as a jurist.

This gracious urbanity shone even more attractively in the amenities of private life. His personal correspondence and frequent contributions to the press were vivified by a sparkling sense of humour, yet ever betrayed the classic scholar. As a politician he was eminently conservative, without sympathy for extremists of any party. Reared a Whig, and only ceasing to be such through the dissolution of the national body, he early embraced and ever taught the same lessons of reverence for the law, loyalty to the Constitution, and love of country which animated those luminaries of wisdom, Webster and Clay, his personal friends as well as his party leaders.