Nelson Avenue
Although Judge Nelson survived Fenimore Cooper by more than twenty years, he was only three years his junior, and the two men became intimate personal friends in Cooperstown. They were often seen together on the street, and in fine personal presence and noble bearing they bore some resemblance to each other. In the old stone Cory building on Main Street, when the lower part was conducted as a hardware store, Judge Nelson and Fenimore Cooper used often to spend an evening, sitting about the stove in a circle of admiring auditors gathered to hear the great men talk. It was shortly after Fenimore Cooper's return to Cooperstown to live at Otsego Hall that Judge Nelson was appointed Chief Justice of the State, and Cooper ever thereafter spoke of his friend as "the Chief." The novelist had a good deal of the lawyer in his composition, and he often discussed legal matters with Judge Nelson, as well as political affairs of state. Both were fond of farming and rural pursuits, and as their farms lay on opposite sides of the lake, Judge Nelson's at Fenimore, and Cooper's at the Chalet, they were able frequently to compare notes of their success as agriculturists, perhaps with the more interest because Cooper himself had formerly owned the farm at Fenimore.
Judge Nelson was not seldom seen on horseback in Cooperstown, and continued this form of exercise long after he had passed the limit of three score years and ten. In his later years he was described as a broad-shouldered and magnificent figure, with a massive head crowned with a wealth of gray hair. He was simple and unaffected in his manners, and never assumed any magniloquence because of his exalted position. On returning from Washington to Cooperstown for the summer, he seemed to delight in holding a kind of indiscriminate levee in the main street of the village, greeting old neighbors, shopkeepers, and farmers alike, and remembering most of them by their Christian names. In those days the merchants were accustomed to leave their empty packing-boxes on the sidewalk in front of their shops, and it was no uncommon sight to see this Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States seated carelessly on a dry-goods box, while he chatted with a group of admiring villagers. His conversation was always entertaining, not only because of his wealth of mind, but on account of his prodigious memory of men and events. His gift of memory was undoubtedly of great use to him on the bench, for he could restate complicated facts in cases so long since heard by him that the issues had been forgotten by the counsel concerned in them.
Judge Nelson was for many years a vestryman, and later a warden, of Christ Church in Cooperstown. In his day there was no thoroughfare through the Cooper Grounds, and he walked to church by way of River Street. Above the stone wall on the west side of River Street was an abundant growth of tansy. It was Judge Nelson's invariable habit to pick a sprig of tansy on his way to Sunday morning service, and he entered the church absently holding the pungent herb to his nostrils, as he made his way to the pew now marked by a tablet in the north transept.
On February 13, 1873, the honors paid to Judge Nelson on his retirement from the bench of the United States Supreme Court were of a character never before known in America, and not in England since Lord Mansfield was the recipient of similar honors at the hands of Erskine and the other lights of the British bar. A committee which included several of the foremost lawyers in New York City, and officially representing the Bar of the Third District, came in a special car from New York to Cooperstown to present to Judge Nelson an address expressive of appreciation of his long service on the bench, and of regret at his retirement, in sympathy with similar resolutions adopted in Albany and Washington.
It was a gala day in Cooperstown when its most distinguished citizen was so honored. The streets, glistening with snow, were filled with people careering about in sleighs. The American flag flapped in the breeze from the tall liberty-pole which then stood at the midst of the cross-roads where Main and Pioneer streets intersect. A horse-race upon the frozen lake had been arranged for the entertainment of the visitors, and some of the young people had bob-sleds ready, prepared to give the distinguished metropolitan lawyers a thrilling ride down the slope of Mt. Vision when the ceremonies should be over.
In the early afternoon the legal and judicial delegation walked quietly two by two to the residence of Judge Nelson, which, although now invaded by the business requirements of the village, still holds its place on Main Street. In the procession were three federal judges, and a dozen chosen members of the bar of New York. The door of the old house, at which nobody stops to knock any more, was thrown open to receive the distinguished delegation. The villagers had gathered in the drawing-room, at the left of the entrance, to take part in the ceremonies. Among many ladies who graced the scene the three daughters of Fenimore Cooper were particularly noted by the visitors. The retired judge sat in his armchair, arrayed in black, wearing a high choker necktie, while Mrs. Nelson, a lovely old lady with a face as fresh at seventy as a summer rain, supported herself on the arm of the chair. The judicial delegation came into the parlor led by Judge Woodruff, E. W. Stoughton, Judge Benedict, and Judge Blatchford, while Clarence A. Seward, Sidney Webster and others followed. Judge Nelson retained his seat, and the most impressive silence prevailed. Then Stoughton, chairman of the committee, after some introductory remarks, read the address which had been prepared by the Bar of New York.
At the conclusion of this address Judge Nelson drew out his spectacles and read his reply, in a voice that trembled with emotion. Then he rose slowly and received the personal congratulations of the delegation and of the village friends assembled.
When, a few months later, Samuel Nelson was dead, and the press of the nation was printing lengthy eulogies of his career as a jurist, a few lines in the little weekly newspaper of his own home town gave the highest estimate of his life that can be accorded to any man: