Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/321

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The Green Bag.

1834, was educated at Delaware, was ad mitted to the bar in 1860, locating at Tiffin. He was prosecuting attorney of Seneca County from 1865 to 1869. Was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1851. In October, 1879, he was elected judge of the Court of Common Pleas of his district. William H. Upson of Akron, Ohio, was appointed by Governor Foster to fill the vacancy upon the Supreme bench caused by the death of Judge White in December, 1883. He served as prosecuting attorney of Summitt County, from 1848 to 1850; was State senator from 1853 to 1855; member of Congress from 1869 to 1873; delegate to the National Conventions which nominated Presidents Lincoln and Hayes. He became one of the judges of the Circuit Court of Ohio upon the establishment of that court in 1885, and was re-elected in 1886. Martin D. Follett was born October 8, 1826, in Vermont. In his younger days he taught school, and in 1859 he began the practice of law at Marietta, where he has continued ever since. He was once the nominee of his party for Congress, but was defeated. He was elected judge of the Supreme Court in 1883, and served out the unexpired term of Judge Longworth. SELWYN N. Owen was born in New York, July 5, 1836. His parents came to Ohio when he was a child. He was edu cated at Antioch College. He was a law student of Kennon & Stewart at Norwalk, Ohio, attending Cincinnati Law School one year, graduating therefrom in 1862. He commenced practice at Fremont, but within a year thereafter he removed to Bryan, Ohio, where he continuously engaged in practice until 1877, when he went on the Common Pleas bench. Judge Owen was so popular that in 1881 the opposition party did not place any one against him, and he was a second time elected judge of that court. He was elected to the Supreme bench before the completion of his term on the

Common Pleas, and became Chief Justice of the latter court in 1885, which place he held for three and a half years. It has been said of Judge Owen by his political oppo nents that he was " an ornament to the Supreme Bench," that " if all the judges on the Supreme Bench held the scales of justice with sudh equal poise as Judge Owen, the charge of a partisan Bench would never be known." Judge Owen displayed great ability in his written opinions, and few judges have been closer students, and no one relishes fine propositions of law, or can solve them more easily than he. As an after-dinner speaker and a good all around practical joker he has no equal, and stands very high among his associates at the bar. Judge Owen is now engaged in the practice of law at Columbus. William T. Spear, a present member of the Supreme Court, was born June 3, 1834, in Warren, Ohio, from whence came several of Ohio's distinguished judges. His father, Edward Spear, also a judge, was a native of Pennsylvania, of Scotch descent; his mother, whose lineage is traced back to colonial times, came from Norwich, Connecticut. His parents came to Ohio, settling at War ren in the year 18 19. Mr. Spear received a common school ed ucation in the excellent union schools of Ohio, supplemented by a most valuable ex perience at the printer's trade. After serv ing an apprenticeship upon the "Trumbull Whig and Transcript," published at Warren, he went to New York City, where he was employed in the office of the New York "Herald," and thereafter became a composi tor, and later a proof-reader, in the publishing house of the Appletons. The value of the practical lessons thus de rived, laying as they did a solid foundation for important duties which he was called upon to perform in after life, can hardly be estimated. Perhaps no pursuit quickens the powers of conception more than the craft of the printer, and especially has the