The Pennsylvania State College Library 4

= a'P THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE COLLEGE LIBRARY 4 / li,' 1 l 11I o, j,, I I ' I I.. 1'r, t , THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES j, 1, J,' id. l ... i. I' , il 1 s : _ ! at5 ' , . 1 _(st _ Berg % I 4 I A I i a Copyright Applied for by the Author . I ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~--- ALBERT H. BELL I MEMOIRS of THE BENCH AND BAR of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania By ALBERT H. BELL, Esq., of The Westmorcland Bar 2 DEDICATION To the Honorable James S. Moorhead, whose great ability, profound learning, high ideals and en- gaging personality have long made him a, distinguish- ed ornament to the Westmoreland Bar, a worthy exemplar to its members and the object of their high regard, and To the Honorable John B. Head, late an honored Judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, to whom like attributes are ascribed and like tribute is due; to -these joint preceptors, their law student of the long ago, the author of these memoirs, in token of his obligation and affection, ventures to dedicate this volume. I 3 PREFACE These Memoirs had their origin in the request of Mr. E. Arthur Sweeny, editor of the "Morning Re- view", of Greensburg, to the, writer to prepare some character sketches of the deceased members of the Bench and Bar of Westmoreland County, the serial publication of which was to become a feature of that enterprising journal. They soon passed the stage of experiment, and the conception of fragmentary history, and, in some degree, have become comprehen- sive of more than a century of the legal annals of the county. Various considerations led to the enlargement of the original plan. The Memoirs as they appeared were accorded a kindly reception and dignified with an interest by the reading public out of proportion, indeed, to the merit of the narratives, but evincing a, desire to have them continued. As the series length- ened, and the writer delved more deeply into the annals of the past, his own interest became deeply en- listed and his pride in the fame of his deceased brethren constrained him to seek to perpetuate it while it was capable of being rescued from the memories of men fast passing away. The American people have been too busy making history to record it. This state- ment carries both commendation and reproach. It is well worth while to be able to do. It is as much pos- terity's rightful heritage to know' of the individuals who wrought, and how they wrought, as it is to en- joy the fruits of their labors. In the preparation of these Memoirs it has been the constant effort of the author to portray the in- O"/,it's, cry, 0 4 4 dividuality of the subject attempted to be sketched. There is a common sameness in all men which enables them to classify in the Genus Hlomo. There is some ten- dency in the individual to be imitative. It is not the creative design to cast men in a common mould. The Divine Architect is independent of models, without limitation in endowments. He imparts to each individual some attributes common to all, some peculiar to himself. It is the latter that distinguishes his personality and excites the inquiry, "what manner of man is this"? To reproduce the individual as nature endowed him, as environment and education shaped him, has been the purpose of the writer. The author freely and gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to "The History of Westmoreland County", by G. Dallas Albert, Esq., "Old and New Westmnoreland" by John N. Boucher, Esq., to James Gregg, Esq., of the Westmoreland Bar, Albert B. Weimer, Esq., of the Philadelphia Bar, and to others for assistance derived in the preparation of these memoirs. ALBERT H. BELL. Greensburg, Pa., March, 1924. 5 THE LAW In attempting to present to the reading public of the present generation brief sketches of the profes- sional, social and moral activities of certain promi- nent members of the legal profession of Westmore- land County who have passed away, it seems helpful to translate ourselves, as nearly as may be, into the environment, to envelop ourselves in the atmosphere, to occupy our minds with the problems and to relate ourselves to the facilities of these worthies who wrought in their day and generation. It is undeniable that, to some extent, we are the creatures of environment. It is' equally true that the measure of our at- tainment takes its proportion from the nature, the variety and the complexity of the problems with which we deal, while the sum of our labors, the ease and com- fort with which they are performed and the efficiency attained depend, in measure, upon the~facilities at our hand. Traditioni is the' mouthpiece of fame. The pan- orama that the eye cannot see, the voices that the ear cannot hear by reason of the lapse of time, history must present to the mental vision if we would envisage the past. It links up the ages and enables us to measure the progress of civilization. The traditions that come down to us tell us that the lawyers of the old bar were men of great ability and some of them of great learning. We can well believe this, while we may not concede that they had the wide range of the jurisprudence of the present day. They were educated in the principles of the Common law. It was then and is now the wisdom of U the ages of legal learning. Its maxims and principles had been wrought out in the travail of painstaking study, had been submitted to the test -of the keenest reasoning and their application had been sanctioned by the approval of generations of men whose lives and fortunes these principles had conserved. It may be conceded that the Common law con- tained the germs of all of our modern jurisprudence, but it required the multiplying wants, the exigencies, the evolution of the complex civilization of the present day to develop those germs into a body of law and a system of administration adequate to the wants of the present age. The Common law, it is true, dealt with the sub- jec.t of Contracts, their elements and interpretation but the contracts were of the simplest kind and large- ly between the party of the first part and the second part, while the contracts that regulate our present day economic and commercial life frequently have parties of the fourth, fifth and sixth parts, each of whose equities and rights require adjudication. The individual, as the exigencies of his business require, deals with his sovereign, the state, corporations become the grantees of the sovereign powers of the State, and states contract with each other. Text writers of the Common Law were so little concerned with the rights, powers and duties of corporations that they confined themselves to a brief dis- cussion of their elementary principles and dismissed the subject with a. single chapter. Today heavy tomes are written by able lawyers elaborating the functions and powers of corporations, and much of the energy of the present day lawyer is expended in the assertion 7 of corporate rights and the defense of corporate powers. It took many years of development of the common law to evolve a separate jurisdiction of equity as ad- ministered by the English Court of Chancery. Sub- jects of equitable jurisdiction for many years re- mained few, but so extensive has the subject of equity jurisprudence become in our day that, expanding with the expansion of business requiring equitable rem- edies, the dockets of the courts are crowded with com- plaints demanding equitable relief. The common law was sage and learned on the subject of titles to landed estates. Such, indeed, was the exhaustive treatment given to every species of land tenure from the estate at will to the estate in fee simple that the tenure to land may be said to have been the chief object of solicitude of the common law. Contin- gent and vested remainders; executory devises; estates upon condition and estates-tail received such a wealth of treatment as was only exceeded by the dry- ness of the subject. But at the present day when land titles have become settled and stable and the action of ejectment has become so infrequent that its ap- pearance on the trial list arouses mild curiosity in every one except the lawyer who has to try it, lawyers find their theater of activity staged with other scenes than a fit setting for the exploitation of land tenures. The purpose of these observations is to illustrate the contrast between the departed lawyer and his work of the past century, and the lawyer of today. They were good lawyers in the legal controversies which engaged their attention. In that day, there were many unsettledland titles in the county. One man held the 8 legal title, the warrant of survey or the patent, an- other claimed the land or a portion of it by improve- ment right or squatter sovereignty. Our early Su- preme Court reports are full of cases adjudicating these controversies and they occupied the attention of the old bar. In the earlier days of the century be- fore entailment was abolished by statute, the free transmission of land was obstructed by estates-tail created by deed or will. Such contentions called into exercise the learning of the common law and directed our predecessor lawyers to the study of Fearne on Contingent Remainders, Coke on Littleton, Bacon's Abridgement of the Common Law, and kindred treatises.

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