Judges of the Federal District Court of * LOUISB. EWBANK Pursuant to an enabling act passed six months previ- ously, Indiana adopted a state constitution on June 29, 1816. In due time, though communication with Washington was then difficult and slow, the ordinance accepting the condi- tions imposed in the enabling act reached Washington, and, on December 11, a measure admitting Indiana into the Union received President Madison’s signature. The printed state constitution was sent to Washington by Governor and laid before Congress on January 9, 1817. It was on March 6, 1817, that was ap- pointed as judge of the United States court for the district of Indiana. This new federal district had been created by an act of Congress passed three days before. The new judge was a native of , then thirty-nine years old. Born on September 2, 1877, he had come to Vincennes in 1801, after having spent three or four years at Lexington, Ken- tucky, where he studied law. After coming to Indiana, he soon became a warm friend and supporter of the territorial Governor, , who appointed him to the office of Attorney General of the territory, which office he held from August 4, 1804, until June 2, 1808, serving in the meantime as a representative in the territorial legislature during the sessions of 1805 and 1806, as territorial delegate to Congress from December 12, 1805, until April 23, 1808, and then as one of the territorial judges. He was also terri- torial chancellor from June 14, 1813, to October 1, 1814. While holding the judgeship, he is said to have ridden once on horseback through the forest from Vincennes to Salisbury, then the county seat of Wayne County, only to find that the single case for trial at that term was a charge against a boy for stealing a pocket knife worth twenty-five cents. He held this office until after the territory was admitted as a

*On April 1, 1939, the members of the bar presented to Judge Robert 0. Baltzell of the United States court for the southern district of Indiana photographs or portraits of all of his ten predecessors. These ten judges, all presided over the United States court for the district of Indiana. Two federal districts were created for Indiana after Judge Baltzell’s appointment and he was assigned ta the district for southern Indiana. Before the division the district for Indiana had existed ror one hundred seven years. The terms of the ten judges varied from a few months to twmty-two years. The ten pictures have been hung on the walls of the district court library room at . They are arranged from the right; near the southeast corner of the room, to the extreme left, nean the southwest corner, in the order of thrir succession. The article here published is Judge Ewbank’s pre6- entation address, with several minor changes. 372 Indiana Magazine of History

State, when he resigned on February 8, 1817. He was active as a member and officer of the frontier militia, commanding a company of dragoons at the in 1811. After this engagement, he was made commander of the cav- alry in General Harrison’s army with the rank of major. He also repeatedly served as an Indian agent and commis- sioner in negotiating treaties with the Indians. He was a delegate to the convention which framed the Constitution of 1816, in which he is said to have exercised great influ- ence. After the admission of Indiana, which terminated his service as a territorial judge, he was commissioned as presi- dent judge for a few weeks in the first district, composed of Gibson, Knox, Orange, Perry, Pike, Posey, Sullivan and Warrick counties, established on January 3, 1817. He prob- ably never held court under this appointment, for he is re- corded as having been commissioned on January 15, 1817, and as having resigned in each of those counties on February 8, 1817. He became the federal district judge four weeks later. Federal litigation would not appear to have been very heavy in the early days of statehood, since the first case was recorded in the district court after the lapse of more than two years, when an indictment against Andrew Hilton was returned on May 4, 1818, for selling whiskey without paying the tax. A jury found the defendant not guilty. In January, 1825, the federal court of Indiana was re- moved to Indianapolis. The last case at Corydon was scire facias for a debt of $1031.23, entitled Cuthbert Bullitt w. Richard M. Beth’s Adminitrators, which was dismissed on November 6, 1824. The first case at Indianapolis was a libel action for the confiscation of liquor and other goods alleged to have been seized because of illegal trading with the Indians. It was tried on January 5, 1825, one half the goods being awarded to the informer. Judge Parke served until his death on July 13, 1835, in his fifty-seventh year. For some time before his death, he suffered a partial paral- ysis. The marked change in his signatures, as they appear on the records, would indicate that he had grown quite feeble at the last, though continuing to hold court. Judge Monks, in his Courts and Lawyers of Imdiana, says that Judge Parke was one of the two best lawyers in the Constitutional Convention of 1816, and one of its most in- fluential members. Oliver H. Smith says, in his Early In- Judges of the Federal District Court of Indiana 373 diana Trials and Sketches, that Parke “was a fair, but not a great lawyer,” adding that he “made a first-rate judge; patient, courageous and kind,” and commending the judge for his honesty and common sense, which should make a judge useful, if it does not otherwise especially distinguish him. Judge Parke acquired one of the largest private libraries in the territory, was active in establishing public libraries at Corydon and Vincennes, was at one time chairman of the board of trustees of , and was the first president of the Indiana Historical Society, founded in 1830. Books from his library are now owned by different persons in Indianapolis, among whom is a member of our committee, Albert L. Rabb.’ The second United States district judge was Jesse Lynch Holman. His commission was dated September 16, 1835, more than two month after Judge Parke’s death. Judge Holman was born at Danville, , on October 24, 1784. He taught school, preached and wrote a novel of which he tried in later life to buyl up all the copies so as to de- stroy the entire edition, under the belief that novel reading was harmful. He studied law in the office of Henry Clay, at Lexington, and attempted to practice at what is now Car- rollton, Kentucky, before he came to Dearborn County in or about the year 1810. He built his residence on a hill adjoining the present site of Aurora and overlooking the River where it makes a right-angle turn. From this point, one can have a magnificent view up the river north- east towards Lawrenceburg, or down the river southwest towards Rising Sun, or east across a broad expanse of level lands in Kentucky on the other side of the river. He and the wife he had married at Carrollton brought with them a family of negro slaves that she had inherited from her father, all of whom they emancipated. Here he, and then his son, William S. Holman, for thirty years a member of the National House who was called the “Watchdog of the Treasury,” and his grandson William S. Holman, Jr., an at- torney, lived in succession for almost a hundred years. The great-grandchildren have recently sold the place to Cornelius O’Brien who has built a summer home there with gardens

See “Beniamin Parke,” Dictionary of American Biography (biographical sketch by George 9. Cottrnan). Albert L. Rabb died at Indianapolis on September 13, 1939. 374 Indiana Magazine of History and landscaped surroundings. Except for a few months after his arrival and three or four years, two decades later, Judge Holman held public office all the time that he lived in Indiana. On May 28, 1811, he was appointed prosecuting attor- ney for Dearborn County, and still held that office on Oc- tober 19, 1812, but for how much longer does not appear. In 1814 he was a representative at the special session of the territorial legislature in June, and a legislative councilor at the regular session in August, being elected president of the council. On September 14 of the same year, the settled por- tion of the territory being districted into three judicial cir- cuits, he was appointed by Governor Harrison as presiding judge of the courts of the second circuit, composed of the counties of Clark, Harrison, Jefferson and Washington. He served in this capacity untiI December 21, 1816, when he resigned to accept an appointment by the Governor as one of the three judges of the Supreme Court of the newly\or- ganized State of Indiana, for which place he was that day confirmed by the Senate. His commission as Judge of the Supreme Court was dated December 28, 1816, and he served two seven-year terms, but Governor James Brown Ray re- fused to reappoint him. In 1831, he was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the to suc- ceed General James Noble, who had died in Washington. The election was by the general assembly and John Tipton won on the seventh ballot, receiving fifty-five votes. The highest vote received by Holman on any ballot was forty-two. Judge Holman now retired to private life for a few years. The death of Judge Parke four years later was followed by the appointment of Judge Holman as United States district judge on September 16, 1833, which position he held until his death on March 28, 1842. He was one of a board of twenty-two trustees chosen by the legislature to take over the Indiana College at Bloomington and reorganize it as In- diana University (1838). He presumably served until 1841, when the legislature named an entirely new board of only nine trustees. Judge Holman continued to be a preacher while ad- vancing through all the gradations of law student, practicing lawyer, prosecuting attorney, legislator and judge, preaching as opportunity offered and duty called. He served as pastor of the Baptist Church at Aurora for several years preceding Judges of the Federal District Court of Indiana 375

his death. Doubtless all of his service to his church was gratuitous. In August, 1815, while he was a presiding judge, holding court with the assistance in each county of two associate judges, Jesse L. Holman advertised a sale on Sep- temben 4, 1815, of lots in the new town of Decatur, near the center of the present city of Aurora. Four years later, when he was one of the judges of our newly created Supreme Court, he became the active head of an organization of spec- ulators, most of whom resided in Kentucky, which group purchased several hundred acres of land bordering on the Ohio River. On this they laid out a town much larger than “Decatur,” but embracing the same site, which they called “Aurora.” Tradition has it that the town of Rising Sun having been established nine miles farther down the river, Judge Holman gave as his reason for choosing the new name that “Aurora comes before the Rising Sun.’’2 Reading through the Journal of the Senate covering the first session at which the law was enacted creating a Su- preme Court, and the appointment as judges of Jesse L. Hol- man and others was approved, one finds this statement con- cerning the state senator from Dearborn County : “Mr. Ferris laid before the house a petition of John Ewbank and others, praying that an act be passed more effectually to encourage the killing of wolves.” Later entries recite the introduction and passage of such an act (published as Chapter 23 of the Acts of 1816) which provided a bounty of two dollars for each wolf two months or more of age, and one dollar for each wolf-puppy less than two months old, if killed within six miles of any settlement. It should be remembered that this was when two dollars would buy an acre of the best lad open for settlement. John Ewbank was the great-grand- father of the writer. He with only a bridle trail down the rocky bed of the creek for a road out to civilization, then lived in the last house back in the wilderness from Lawrence- burg. His home was on the same spot where his great-grand- son now lives, half a mile from the railroad, with the pave- ment on State Highway 56 passing his door; with telephone, radio, automobile, electricity and any other twentieth cen- utry conveniences that he may choose to pay for. succeeded Judge Holman. Re-

’ See “Seeking a Federal Judgeship” (Holman Correspondence), Indiauo Ma#% zine of Historw (Sept., 1939). XXXV, 311-326: also Bee “Jesse Lynch Holman. Dictionary of American Biouraphg (sketch by William 0. Lynch). 376 Indiana Magazine of History ceiving his commission on May 2, 1842, he served as Federal District Judge for more than twenty years. He was born in Otsego County, in east central , on March 29, 1806. In 1822, he came with his parents to Terre Haute, Indiana. Here he studied law in an office, and at the age of twenty-three was elected prosecuting attorney for the seventh circuit, which embraced Vigo County. At twenty- five, he was elected to the legislature, which met annually under the old constitution, and served during the sessions of 1831, 1832 and 1833, continuing through the first two of those years to appear in court as prosecuting attorney. At that time, the president judges of the different circuits were chosen by the General Assembly, and, in 1837, Huntington became president judge of the seventh circuit, which con- sisted of ten counties: Clay, Daviess, Greene, Knox, Martin, Monroe, Owen, Putnam, Sullivan and Vigo. He resigned his position in 1841 to become Commissioner of the General Land Office at Washington, then resigned as Commissioner the following year on being appointed as judge of the United States district court. A Whig legislature having been elect- ed in 1840, an act was passed in the following February which abolished the board of trustees of Indiana University with right of perpetual succession to which the legislature of 1838 had appointed twenty-two Democrats, substituted what appears to have been a bi-partisan board of nine, also given power to fill all vacancies in their own body unless and until some future legislature should interfere, and named as one of the trustees Elisha M. Huntington. Just how long he continued to be a trustee has not been learned with cer- tainty. He lived for a time in Perry County on a large tract of land that he had purchased bordering on the Ohio River. It embraced the present site of Tell City, but, in 1858, he sold the whole tract to the Swiss Colonization Society, and re-established his residence at Terre Haute. He died on October 26, 1862. One of the celebrated cases decided by Judge Huntington was that of an owner of negro slaves in Missouri who had removed them to Illinois, remained there until he had gained a legal residence and had voted there, and afterwards had taken the negroes back to Missouri and sold them to the plaintiff. Under an instruction by the court that upon these facts the slaves became free under the law of Illinois, and Judges Qf the Federal District Court of Indiana 377 that the subsequent purchaser acquired no title, a jury found for the defendant (Vaughan v. Williams 3 McLean 530). This was in 1845, eleven years before a majority of the Supreme Court of the United States, in deciding the Dred Scott case, declared that Scott and his wife and daughter were not released from slavery under facts which were sim- ilar, except that the army surgeon who took Dred Scott and his family into the free state of Illinois and then into the territory which afterwards became , north of the line fixed by the Missouri compromise as the northern limit of slaveholding territory, did not become a citizen of either place before he returned to Missouri and sold his slaves there. , the fourth of the United States district judges for the district of Indiana, was appointed on December 22, 1862, almost two months after Judge Hunting- ton’s death. Resigning the position of Secretary of the Interior in President Lincoln’s cabinet to accept this appoint- ment, Judge Smith, then little more than fifty-four years of age, was doubtless attracted by the life tenure of the judge- ship. However, he died on January 7, 1864, one year and sixteen days after he was appointed. Judge Smith was born at , on April 16, 1808. Coming to , he began in a law office there the legal studies which he continued in the office of Oliver H. Smith at Connersville, to which place he had come by following the course of public improvements up the Whitewater Valley to locate there in 1827. He was an able and successful advocate and a master of forensic eloquence. Turning his attention to politics, he was repeat- edly elected to the House of Representatives of the state legislature, of which he was Speaker during the sessions of 1835 and 1836. He served three terms in the lower House of Congress, frorq 1843 to 1849, and was a nominee of the newly formed Republican Party in 1856 for presidential elec- tor. Four years later, he presided at the National Conven- tion in Chicago which nominated for Presi- dent, and, being generally credited with influence in getting Mr. Lincoln nominated, was made Secretary of the Interior in March, 1861. He continued in the Cabinet until made a judge. It is said of him, as of Moses, that the place where his body is now buried is unknown. It is said to have been buried in the old cemetery on Kentucky Avenue in Indian- 378 Indiana Magazine of History apolis about the time of the opening of Crown Hill Cemetery, in which the widow afterward built a large mausoleum. Some controversy arose over the desire of his Masonic friends to remove him to Connersville, and twenty years ago it was reported that the body was no longer in the mausoleum. A report circulated that because of her controversy with his friends, the widow did not want the exact place of his burial known.3 Albert S. White was appointed as the fifth United States district judge, succeeding Judge Smith. Born at Blooming Grove, Orange County, New York, not far from the New Jersey state line, on October 24, 1803, he was graduated at Union College in the same class with William H. Seward, afterwards Lincoln’s Secretary of State. He studied law, and, in 1825, was admitted to the bar in New York before he came to Indiana. He died at Stockwell, Tippecanoe Coun- ty, Indiana, the first station out of Lafayette on his rail- road on September 24, 1864. On coming to Indiana, he first located at Rushville, then removed to Paoli, and, in March, 1829, took up his residence at Lafayette. He acted in different capacities, as reporter, assistant clerk and clerk in succession, at sessions of the legislature, which then met annually, from 1828 until 1835. He was very active in procuring the construction of the Wabash and Erie Canal at Lafayette, and the canal-boat that made the first trip from there to Toledo bore his name. He was an unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the national House in 1832, but was elected as a Whig in 1836, and re- elected in 1838, each time carrying every county in his dis- trict. In 1839, Senator John Tipton having refused to run again because he sensed defeat for the Democrats, Represen- tative White was elected to the Senate of the United States to succeed him and served one term of six years. Notwith- standing Senator Tipton’s withdrawal, the contest for the place in 1839 was so spirited that thirty-six ballots were required for a choice. In 1845, Senator White resumed the practice of law, but soon afterwards, upon the organization of the Indianapolis & Lafayette Railroad under its charter, approved January 19, 1846, he became its president and actively assumed the

*See Louis J. Railey. “Caleb Blood Smith,” !,ndianu Magazine of Historv (Sept., 1933). XXIX. 218-239 : also nee “Caleb B. Smith, Dictimaru of Ammican Bwplraphv (sketch by Newton D. Mereness). Judges of the Federal District Court of Indiana 379

burden of its construction, being a pioneer in the construc- tion of railroads in the Wabash Valley. The rails for this new line were brought by canal boat to Lafayette and its construction proceeded southward from that point. In September, 1850, the board of directors or- dered that payments for each share of capital stock should be made at the rate of $5 every 90 days, beginning in October. The following June (1851), President White ad- vertised in the Indianapolis Sentinel that the iron would soon be delivered, when the laying of the rails would commence so as to run cars to Lebanon early in the Fall and to Indi- anapolis early the next Spring (1852), urgently requesting prompt payment of installments. In 1852 he organized and for three years served as president of the Wabash & Western Railway, at first ex- tending from Lafayette to Logansport, to which the first train was run on March 20, 1856. This railroad was a prin- cipal factor in killing the Wabash and Erie Canal, which it paralleled throughout its forty miles, and as afterward extended was made to parallel it for more than two hundred miles, from Toledo, Ohio, to Williamsport, Indiana, within ten miles of the Illinois State line. Whitestown, the first station south-east of Lebanon on what was then the Lafay- ette & Indianapolis Railroad (now part of the Big Four) perpetuates Judge White’s name as a railroad executive. At about this time, his activity in constructing and oper- ating railroads appears to have ceased, but the practice was then followed of naming locomotives, as had been customary with steamboats, instead of merely numbering them ; and the Albert S. White locomotive continued to bear his name until the time of his death. That it also carried his picture on its headlight is attested by a note attached to such a picture (about 12 by 18 inches) in the Tippecanoe County Historical Association Museum at Lafayette which states that this picture was “on the outer exposure of the head- light” of that locomotive from 1854 until 1864. Judge White was made a trustee of Indiana University in 1846 and served until 1851. He was again elected to Con- gress in 1860, but was defeated for renomination in 1862, his defeat being attributed to his earnest stand in favor of emancipation. He was appointed by President Lincoln to succeed Judge Caleb B. Smith as United States district judge 380 Indiana Magazine of History on January 18, 1864. He presided as judge of the district court for only a few months before the summer vacation. The first entry in the Order Book bearing his signature was on March 8, 1864, and the last was in June when court ad- journed for the summer. His last public service was at the ceremonial dedication of Crown Hill Cemetery at Indianapolis on June 1, 1864, where he was listed as the principal speaker. The city of Lafayette accorded him civic honors at his funeral. A special train carried a number of prominent citi- zens to Stockwell and, brought back the funeral party, and after elaborate funeral services, participated in by the mayor, common council, the judges and members of the bar, he was buried in the old plot adjoining Greenbush Cemetery. The Lafayette Courier of September 6, 1864, the day of the funer- al, suggested as a fitting tribute to his memory that all business be suspended from 1 :30 to 3 :OQ P.M., that is, during the funeral ceremonies. Judge White is remembered as a successful advocate, ranking high as a beginner among the circuit-riding bar. Judge Monks says in his Courts and Law- yers of Indiana that he “neglected his law practice for poli- tic~.”~ David McDonald was appointed to succeed Judge White and took the oath of office on December 13, 1864. He died on August 25, 1869. Judge McDonald was born on May 4, 1803, in Logan County, Kentucky, a few miles west of Bowl- ing Green, removed to Indiana in 1817, and was admitted to the bar at Washington, Daviess County, in 1830. While a student he had been licensed in 1820 to preach in the relig- ious body known as New Lights. He was elected as a state representative in 1833. From December 4, 1834, until he resigned on August 17, 1837, he was prosecuting attorney for the Seventh Circuit, which then embraced the ten coun- ties of Brown, Clay, Daviess, Greene, Knox, Martin, Monroe, Owen, Putnam, Sullivan and Vigo. On January 28, 1839, Judge McDonald was chosen by the legislature, as provided in the constitution of 1816, to a seven-year term as president judge of the tenth circuit, newly created by redistricting the state into eleven circuits where there had been only nine. On. taking possession of this office, he removed to Bloomington. His new circuit em- braced eight counties : Brown, Daviess, Greene, Lawrence,

4See “Albert S. White,” ibd (sketch by Newton D. Merenesa). Judges of the Federal District Court of Indiana 381

Monroe, Morgan, Martin and Owen. Six of these were taken from the seventh circuit. The president judge of the old seventh circuit, Elisha M. Huntington, therefore preceded Judge McDonald on the circuit bench, with an interval of less than two years between them, and was in turn followed by him as Judge of the Federal District Court. Judge Hunt- ington, as we have seen, resigned on July 12, 1841, from the circuit court for the seventh circuit to go to Washington as Commissioner of the General Land office. Being reelected, Judge McDonald continued as a president judge until October 12, 1852, when he was succeeded by Alvin P. Hovey, after- wards Governor of Indiana, who had been elected as judge by popular vote under the provisions of the newly adopted constitution of 1851 that is still in force. In 1852, Judge McDonald was a candidate for election as a judge of the state supreme court and ran ahead of his ticket, but was defeated. During all of his term as prosecuting attorney and until after the close of his first term as circuit judge, there was not a railroad nor even an improved highway in any of the counties that he served and he traveled his cir- cuit on horseback. At the time of his appointment as United States dis- trict judge for Indiana in 1864, he would seem to have been conducting a private law school; and, forty-five years ago, it was asserted that he continued to do so at least for a time after he was appointed. In 1841, while he was president judge of the tenth circuit, including Monroe County, Judge McDonald accepted an appointment as the first law professor of Indiana University, by which name the former “college” at Bloomington had begun to be called, and a historian of fifty years later asserts that on the fifth of December, 1842, he “read the first law lecture ever read in this state.” It seems, however, that others had been previously elected by the board of trustees to the position of law professor, Judge Miles C. Eggleston, former Representative Tilghman A. How- ard being reported as declining to accept the position when chosen. Judge Isaac Blaclrfcrd, who in 1852 ended a term of thirty-six years as judge of the Supreme Court of Indiana, is said once to have been elected as law professor of Indiana University, but he preferred a federal position at Washington. There is also some reason to believe that Mr. Charles Lewis 382 Indiana Magazine of History may have been law professor while the institution was oper- ating as Indiana College before the year 1838. Judge McDonald served on the faculty of the law school until 1852, being all of the time a circuit court judge. He quit his professorship five years after the first railroad reached Indianapolis connecting the city with the steamboat lines on the Ohio River at Madison and at about the time that different railroads reached Indianapolis from Lafayette, Terre Haute, Jeffersonville, Lawrenceburg, Richmond, Win- chester and Peru, all of which have since become parts of through lines into and across adjoining states. In fact, it was only five years after the beginning of the era of plank road and turnpike building in the older settlements, when the flood of incorporations for that purpose by special acts had run as high as sixty-six in a year (1851), besides companies formed under the general law. These acts allowed four or five or more years within which to complete an improvement, but so far as the writer’s knowledge goes, none of them was ever constructed in the counties constituting the tenth judicial circuit. Judge Mc- Donald’s public service to the state as judge in a circuit of eight counties was given on a dirt road basis of probably three miles an hour, with substantially a whole day consumed in traveling from one county seat town to another. He re- moved to Indianapolis in 1853, where he engaged actively in the practice of law, being at one time a partner of David Macy, and at another of Albert G. Porter, afterwards Gov- ernor of Indiana. Here his book entitled McDonald’s Treat- ise on Justices of the Peace and Constables was published in 1857. After repeated revisions, this book is still recognized as an authority on the powers and duties of Justices of the Peace and practice in justices’ cqurts. In 1855 and 1856, he served as a trustee of Indiana University. In the latter year, Judge McDonald was chosen as President of Indiana Asbury University, now DePauw, at Greencastle, but de- ~lined.~ Walter Q. Gresham was thirty-seven years of age when Judge McDonald died. He began the practice of law at Cory- don in 1853, was elected to the state legislature in 1860, was made Colonel of the Fifty-third Regiment of Indiana Volun-

See Flora McDonald Ketcham. “David McDonald,” Z+am Magaziye of Histmu (Sept.. 1932). XXVIII, 180-187; “Diaries of Judge David McDonald, ibid. (Dec.. 1952). 282-301. Judges of the Federal District Court of Indiana 383 teer Infantry when the Civil War broke out in 1861. By a series of promotions, he was advanced to the rank of Major Genera1,which he held when he was mustered out in 1865. In 1867-1868, he served as financial agent of the state of Indiana in New York City. He was appointed as district judge by President Grant on September 1, 1869, and held that office until April 11, 1883, when he resigned. He became Postmaster General in President Arthur’s Cabinet two days later. A year and a half afterwards, on September 24, 1884, he became Secre- tary of the Treasury, but five weeks later, on October 28, 1884, he quitted the President’s Cabinet on being appointed United States circuit judge for the seventh circuit. He sought nomination by the Republican National Conven- tion as its candidate for the presidency in 1888, when Ben- jamin Harrison was nominated and elected, and again in 1892, when President Harrison, being renominated, was de- feated by Grover Cleveland. He supported President Cleve- land’s candidacy during the campaign of 1892, and was ap- pcinted to the President’s Cabinet as Secretary of State on Xarch 6, 1S93, when he resigned as circuit judge. He con- tinued as Secretary of State until his death, two years later. Judge Gresham was born near Lanesville, a few miles east of Corydon, in Harrison County, Indiana, on March 17, 1832. I-Ie was a student at Indiana University for a short time, but left without graduating and studied law in an of- fice in Corydon, a frequent method of acquiring a legal edu- cation in the Middle West ninety years ago. Admitted to the bar in 1853, at twenty-one years of age, he practiced his profession €or half a dozen years, when he became a member of the legislature in 1860, an officer of the volunteer army in 1861, state financial agent in 1867, district judge in 1869, cabinet officer in 1883, circuit judge in 1884, and again a member of the President’s Cabinet in 1893. He died on May 28, 1895, without ever having engaged actively in the practice of the law, except for the first few years of his professional life. During his service in the army, he was repeatedly a member of courts martial, where his learning and skill as a lawyer were called into play. One court mar- tial in which he participated was that of Colonel Thomas Worthington, of Ohio, accused of issuing a pamphlet charging 384 Indiana Magazine of History his superior officer with having disobeyed an order of Gen- eral Grant in command at the Battle of Shiloh. Colonel Gresham was barely thirty years old in 1862, while the court martial included three brigadier generals and three colonels, all his seniors. The truth or falsity of what was charged in the pamphlet was not inquired into, its publication while the army was facing an enemy being adjudged to constitute insubordination, for which Colonel Worthington was dismissed from the army. Colonel Gresh- am maintained that, since the commanding officer who had preferred the charges and who testified at the trial had ap- pointed the members of the Court, Colonel Worthington’s denial of the accuser’s right, even in time of war, to bring an officer to trial before a court the members of which had been chosen by such accuser, should be sustained. Five years later the order of dismissal was revoked, and Colonel Worth- ington was permitted tol resign as of the date when it had been approved. Notwithstanding his limited experience at the bar and his political activities, Judge Gresham took high rank as a judge during his fourteen years on the district bench and eight years as a circuit judge. Dying at Wash- ington while in the President’s Cabinet, he was given soldier’s burial in Arlington Cemetery.G William Allen Woods resigned his position as judge of the Supreme Court of Indiana to become judge of the United States district court on May 8, 1883, after Judge Gresham became Postmaster General. He had been elected to the legislature of Indiana in 1866, was elected in 1872 circuit judge of the thirty-fourth circuit in Indiana, comprising the counties of Elkhart and LaGrange, and ree1ecte:l in 1878. Two years later he was elected to the Supreme Court of In- diana where he served until appointed United States district judge. After serving nine years as district judge, he resign- ed to become, on March 17, 1892, a United States circuit judge of the seventh circuit, which position he held for an- other nine years, until his death on June 29, 1901. Judge Woods was born on May 16, 1837, near Farming- ton, Mxmhall County, Tennessee. When he was only a month old, his father died, and his mother having remarried

6 See Mary Aiice Tyner. “Waltrr Q. Grecham,” ibid. (Dee.. 1933). XXIX, 297-338: Jnmei R. Mock, “The Diploma;;y of Walter Q. Gresham,” ibid. (Sept.. 1935). XXXI 213-221 : “Walter 4. Gresha.m, Dictionary of American Biography (sketch by Her- bert F. Wright). Judges of the Federal District Court of Indiana 385

when he was seven years old, the family moved to Iowa, where his step-father soon afterwards died. His boyhood was spent on his mother’s farm in Iowa. Returning to In- diana, he entered Wabash College in 1855, and after grad- uating in 1859, taught school. He began the practice of law at Goshen in 1862.? The resignation of Judge Woods was followed by the appointment of John H. Baker as United States district judge on March 29, 1892. At the end of ten years of service, having passed the age of seventy, he resigned on December 16, 1902. Judge Baker was born near Rochester in Monroe County, New k’ork, on February 28, 1832. His childhood and youth were spent on a farm near the Michigan line, in Fulton County, Ohio. He spent two years at Ohio Wesleyan University and then read law at Adrian, Michigan. In 1857, he settled at Goshen, Elkhart County, Indiina, and com- menced practice as an attorney. In 1874, when the so-called Granger upheaval upset so many political calculations in the west and central states, he was one of ten new Representa- tives from Indiana out of a total of thirteen, and, being twice reelected, he served in Congress until March 4, 1881. At the end of his third term, he declined reelection, and there- after continued actively in the practice of law until he became district judge eleven years later. After his resignation from the judgeship, he retired to his home in Goshen, and, for almost fourteen years, lived there quietly among his old friends and neighbors, in the full enjoyment of “honor, love, obedience and troops of friends.” Although nearly eighty- seven, years old, he continued to the last so active and so deeply interested in current events and the development of the law that it would seem he must sometimes have regretted giving up the office he had filled so well. Upon the resignation of Judge Baker as judge of the United States district court, Albert B. Anderson was ap- pointed as his successor, on December 18, 1902, and contin- ued in that office until January 14, 1925, when he was ap- pointed as one of the judges of the federal circuit court of appeals. He served more than four years, before retiring in June, 1929. Judge Anderson was born on February 1, 1857, at Eagle Village, in Boone County, near Zionsville, In-

7 See “William Allen Woods.” Dietiwry of American Biography (sketch by George W. Goble). 386 Indiana Magazine of History diana, to which latter place the family removed in his early childhood. His father was Philander Anderson, a druggist, and his mother was Emma Dugan Anderson. Both were Presbyterians who gave each of their five sons and their one daughter a college education. Later in life, the father became a banker at Zionsville, but afterwards removed with his wife and younger children to Anthony, Kansas. Judge Anderson was graduated from Wabash College in 1879, and for a time studied law in the office of McDonald and Butler at Indianapolis, and then with Hurley and Crane at Craw- fordsville. He was admitted to the bar at Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, Indiana, in 1881. While yet a student, he was made deputy prosecuting attorney for that county. He was elected Prosecuting Attorney in 1886 and reelected in 1890, serving four years. As prosecuting attorney, he conducted many important cases, the most noted of which was the prosecution of the Reverend William F. Petit on the charge of murdering his wife. His closing argument for the prosecution in that case brought him much acclaim. While in college, he won first honors in state and interstate oratorical cpntests, and while at the bar frequently appeared as a public speaker. Attorney Anderson joined with Benjamin Crane in form- ing the law firm of Crane and Anderson in 1885, a connec- tion which continued until he ceased to practice law in 1902. He was married in November, 1882, to Miss Rose Campbell, whose younger sister was married in 1896 to his law part- ner, Benjamin Crane. The Campbell sisters were daughters of Professor John L. Campbell of Wabash College. The only child of Judge and Mrs. Anderson, a son, died in early in- fancy. Judge Anderson practiced his profession twenty-one years, until appointed United States district judge. He was a man of wide reading, which with his practice at the bar in Indiana, added greatly to his qualifications both as a trial judge and as a chancellor. His judicial work in equity cases, while not so spectacular as in jury trials, was appre- ciated and admired by the bar and by others under whose notice it came. His integrity was never doubted. When he seemed severe, it was the severity required by the faithful performance of duty. He wrote few opinions, but not in- frequently would orally announce from the bench his reasons for a decision or a ruling that he was making. His worth Judges of the Federal District Court of Indiana 387

was often recognized by assignments to sit as a trial judge in the federal courts at Chicago, New York City and else- where. He was sometimes called to assist in deciding ap- pealed cases in the Circuit Court of Appeals at Chicago, when a judge was absent, even before he was promoted to be a circuit judge.8

sFor brief sketches of Albert B. Anderson, who died in 1938, and Robert C. Baltzell, his successor. who is now judge of the United States wurt for the district of southern Indiana, see Whds Who in America.