Howard County IN Archives History - Books .....Probate And Common Pleas Court 1909
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Book Title: History Of Howard County Indiana

PROBATE AND COMMON PLEAS COURT.
BY OTIS C. POLLARD.

   Nathan C. Beals, the first probate judge in the county, was a plain,
good-natured, unsophisticated farmer, and a man of average intellect. He never
had a legal education.

   Benjamin Lesoura, successor to Beals, was an honest, upright and industrious
man of ordinary powers of mind. He was a farmer by occupation and not a lawyer.
At one time he lived near Alto and was in moderate circumstances.

   N. C. Beals was elected again and followed in office by Associate Judge
Robert Ervin.

   May 14, 1852, an act of the legislature was approved by the governor which
abolished the probate courts and established common pleas courts. All business
pending before the probate courts, and all business transferred from such to the
circuit courts, and all business commenced in the circuit courts by virtue of
any local law, was, by an act of 1853, transferred to the courts of common pleas
in the proper counties.

   E. S. Stone was the first judge of the common pleas court. Stone was a quiet,
modest, and intelligent lawyer of fair ability. He was tall, slender, and
cadaverous in appearance. Stone had a habit of parting his coat tails and
thrusting them forward. In this position he would hold them by ramming his hands
into his pockets. After one Jonathan William Evans, of Hamilton county, had made
a somewhat sophomoric argument and had sat down, Stone went through his
customary performance of so arranging his coat tails, and then observed: "If the
gentleman had only plucked a few feathers from the wings of his imagination and
stuck them in the tail of his judgment, he would have fared better."

STONE'S SUCCESSOR.

   Nathaniel R. Linsday succeeded Stone. He was twice elected judge of this
court, but resigned before the end of his second term. Before he was eight years
of age he was left, by the death of his father, to orphanage and penury in a
wilderness home, and without property, or a father's counsel, commenced the
battle of life, in his early youth, in the midst of circumstances that seem to
the present generation very unpromising. And he gave evidence of his ability and
trustworthiness to be elected justice of the peace at the age of twenty-four
years, considering the fact that at the time of his selection to the office,
1839, the position was very important. He was a member of the legislature,
engaged in codifying the laws of the state after the adoption of the present
constitution, and arose to be a leader among the people where he resided, and
was best known, and had a reputation throughout the state as an able lawyer, a
sound, safe and conservative legislator. In the last years of his life he was
engaged in the advocacy of a system of a reform of the mode of trials by jury
and to enlarge the amount of property to be held exempt from execution. As a
lawyer he was distinguished for his ability as an advocate and tact in the
management of a trial of a cause and for his fidelity to his clients and
courtesy to members of the profession and the courts.

JUDGE GREEN.

   Judge Green, of Tipton, was the third judge of the court. Extending his hand,
Judge Green greeted an acquaintance with a cordial smile and was social with
everybody. The duties of his office he performed in a plodding but conscientious
manner. Principally and essentially a pioneer lawyer, he tried a case in a plain
matter-of-fact style, exactly as our rough-and-ready forefathers felled the
trees of the forest and drained the large swamps with which our land was
covered. He clothed his thought generally in unembellished and commonplace
language and exemplified it with the most simple and homely illustration. His
heart beat with munificent impulses. Kind, benevolent and obliging, he so
endeared himself to the younger attorneys, who practiced before him. whom he
would aid and assist in a hundred little ways, that they, advanced to years of
age, remembered him with deep gratitude.

   Green was a jolly man and very fond of a joke. It is told of him that during
the prevalence of high water in Tipton—and in an early day high water prevailed
there nearly all the year—he was seen one day floating around his yard in a
craft of rude construction, pushing himself with a pole.

   "What are you doing, Judge?" was asked of him.

   "I am tired of drinking this damned pond water and trying to find my well!"

LAST COMMON PLEAS JUDGE.

   William Garver, the last common pleas judge, lived in Hamilton county, where
he began the practice of the law. His preceptor in the law was Isaac Blackford,
later judge of the supreme court of Indiana, and annotator of the Blackford
reports. From this painstaking master, who bore the reputation of being a keen
criticiser of his students, Garver became quite thoroughly grounded in the
rudiments of the law. While Garver never made anything more than an ordinary
reputation in the law, he developed considerable strength when it came to taking
a common-sense view of a case. He was a state senator and a state attorney, but
as a candidate for circuit judge and congressman he was defeated.

   By act of March 6, 1873, courts of common pleas throughout the state were
abolished. The thirty-sixth judicial circuit was formed and James O'Brien was
ousted from his office as judge pro tern, of the seventeenth judicial district,
as Judge Davis was not an inhabitant of any one of the counties of which it was
composed after being separated from the two counties mentioned. In subsequent
years Judge O'Brien was a resident of Howard county, wherein he served upon the
circuit bench as appointee to succeed Judge Overman, of Tipton.



Additional Comments:
From:

HISTORY OF HOWARD COUNTY INDIANA
BY
JACKSON MORROW, B. A.
ILLUSTRATED
VOL. I
B. F. BOWEN & COMPANY
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

(circa 1909)

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