THE SUPREME COURT OF MAINE.
III.
By Charles Hamlin.
Charles Wesley Walton, the senior associate justice both in years and term of service, was born at Mexico, Oxford County, Maine, December 9, 1819. He is the son of Artemas G. and Abigail (Stevens) Walton, and their third child and only son. His early education, besides the little acquired in the common school of those days, scanty enough at the best, was fourteen years in a printing-office at Dover, New Hampshire, and Paris, Maine, and in Boston. He was thus bred a printer, and it was there that he got a taste for study and knowledge that, like Franklin, led to a desire to improve his condition in life. Accordingly he began the study of law, was a student in the office of the late Isaac Randall, of Dixficld, and having been admitted to the Bar in 1843, was his partner for a while. Besides practicing law he served in all of the town offices, clerk, moderator, agent, selectman, collector, treasurer and school committee. As a school teacher his seven years' experience well fitted him for the duties of the latter office, while the practical acquaintance he obtained of town business in all of them became useful to him both at the bar and on the bench. It must not be supposed that he found the profession lucrative in those times, for he desired to be elected clerk of courts, the income and emoluments of which were tempting; but fortunately for him he was defeated in the election, and so his talents were not buried in a merely clerical place. He was soon after, in 1847, made county attorney, and served as such four years. His ability and success at the Bar brought him in due time the desired results, and demanded a wider field for practice, and he therefore removed to Auburn, Androscoggin County, in 1855, and again became county attorney in 1857. In 1860 he was elected to the Thirty-seventh Congress, succeeding Hon. John J. Perry. He was placed upon the committee of private land-claims as a recognition of his standing as a lawyer. After serving in Congress something more than a year, he accepted an appointment to the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court, May 14, 1862. This appointment, made by Governor Washburn, has been continued with out interruption to the present time, a judicial life of more than thirty-three years, and in excess of any other judge who has presided in this court. During this long term of service on the bench, Judge Walton has had as associates, who no longer live, Chief Justices Tenney and Appleton, Associate Justices Rice, Cutting, Davis, Goodenow, Kent, Dickerson, Fox, Barrows, Danforth, Tapley, Virgin and Libbey.
To have made himself one of the ablest lawyers in the State, to have gained a seat on the floor of Congress, and to have won and retained the confidence and respect of his associates on the bench, many of whom have a national reputation, would seem to have filled the measure of the printer boy's ambition; but a true estimate of his place in the history of the Maine Bench shows something more — a strong judge, of marked individuality, and one who has given positive additions, and of permanent value, to the body and growth of the law. And an inquiry into the source and cause of Judge Walton's exalted judicial position will prove interesting. It is not what is called a liberal or college education, however desirable it may be as regards success in the world, that gives a man the confidence and favor of the community, or advancement to posts
