The History of Orange County New York

by Unknown

It is simple truth and justice to say that human life and limb are safer to-day in Orange County because that sturdy fighter and dangerous opponent, William F. O'Neill, caring not whether his client was poor or rich, never allowed a case of negligence, once brought to his attention, to pass unchallenged and un-presented to a court of justice. And if his example and his influence have encouraged others, as indeed they have, in the same path of professional honor and public duty, then he, too, has not lived in vain.

The advent of Mr. O'Neill was coincident with the rise of a new generation of advocates who were confronted at first with a supremacy in the older bar which never could have been ousted by superior talent. It yielded at last to the only rivals it could not resist, decay and death, even as now the lawyers I am about to name will soon surrender to a still later generation their coveted place and prominence in the courts. I say about to name because, notwithstanding the considerations which suggest the omission of any reference to the living, it seems to be inartistic and it ought to be unnecessary to break off a narrative in the middle because some of its characters are still living. Caution and delicacy may indeed discourage, if not wholly forbid such un-stinted praise as may be properly bestowed upon a finished, rounded career, far removed from possible marring by some late and regrettable error. But, on the other hand, the opinion of his contemporaries by one who has freely mingled with them and frequently been pitted against them ought to be accurate, and, if accurate, then interesting and valuable. How we would all enjoy now Winfield's own characterization of Samuel J. Wilkin and William F. Sharpe, his partner; of Benjamin F. Duryea and Joseph W. Gott, the senior; of David F. Gedney and Stephen W. Fullerton. There are histories of our own times and this is one of them. Let me proceed then, diffidently, indeed, but still unflinchingly, to perform the task assigned to me before the subjects and the generation chiefly interested in them have all alike passed away; appealing to the judgment of those still able to decide, upon the candor, fairness and impartiality of the estimates. Indeed, if we wait until all contemporaries have passed away, who is left to determine whether the estimates are just?

William J. Groo is older than the lawyers who came to the bar in the late sixties, but he falls naturally in this group, because he came to Orange County in 1866, when he at once took a foremost place among its trial lawyers, his reputation having preceded him. He had already become leader of the bar of Sullivan County, where in 1856 he was elected its district attorney. This leadership was, in itself, evidence of great ability, for he had to win his spurs against such intellectual giants as General Niven, Judge Bush, Senator Low and James L. Stewart. It is not strange, then, that in him Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton found a match for all their powers and an equal in all the arts and accomplishment of the advocate. His perfect self-possession, his readiness in retort, his firm grasp of the points in controversy, his unfailing memory enabling him to marshal the testimony with crushing effect, his severe logic, his scathing enunciation, his intrepid spirit, and, above all, his moral earnestness combined to make him a dreaded and formidable adversary.

Judge Groo (for he acquired the title through his election as special county judge of Orange County in the year 1868) has carried this quality of moral earnestness, which so largely contributed to his success at the bar, into all the interests and relations of life. He early espoused the cause of temperance and has long been one of the most prominent members of the prohibition party, which at different times has bestowed upon him its complimentary but unsubstantial nomination for governor and judge of the Court of Appeals. He has always insisted that the absolute prohibition of the sale of liquors in the State of New York is not only a righteous and necessary reform, but an entirely feasible one. The remarkable strength of this movement in the South, followed as it has been by recent prohibitory legislation in several of the States, is one of the cheering rewards for unselfish, life-long devotion to principle which he is permitted to enjoy in his declining years. There is no doubt whatever that his sacrifices in behalf of this cause seriously interfered with his later eminence at the bar, for such eminence, even when once achieved, can be maintained only by sedulous, un-relaxed devotion; by steady, unqualified, undivided allegiance to that most exacting of all masters—the law.

This consecration to higher duties and nobler aims than those involved in mere professional success does not, however, constitute the sole reason why Judge Groo ceased to be a familiar and prominent figure in the courts of Orange County. This was due primarily to the removal of his office to New York, where he continued to win many notable legal triumphs until failing health compelled him to retire from active practice. His dignified and honorable repose is divided between his home in Middletown and his summer retreat in his native county of Sullivan at Grooville, so named in honor of one of his Revolutionary ancestors.

Though Lewis E. Carr has transferred his professional activities to a wider field, yet he acquired and developed in Orange County those transcendent qualities as a trial lawyer which have since, in nearly every county of the State, excited the astonishment of the bar and the admiration of the courts. From the very first he produced a profound impression upon Winfield, Gedney and Fullerton, with whom he engaged in vigorous, courageous contest at a time when it was difficult, indeed, to stand up against their powerful and almost irresistible influence. But it was when he came to be associated with them in some most important trials that they were even more impressed with his knowledge of fundamental principles, his wisdom in consultation, his mature and unerring judgment. Judge Gedney once remarked in a public tribute to Mr. Carr in his early life that it was possible to gain a far more accurate measurement of a lawyer's real ability through association with him than in opposition to him. He added that it was after enjoying such opportunities to become acquainted with Mr. Carr that he was the better able to express admiration of his surpassing talents as well as confidence in his brilliant future. Mr. Carr has since then enjoyed many honors and some supreme triumphs, but it is doubtful that any encomium has ever given him deeper pleasure than this now amply verified prediction by so competent an authority.

Nothing more surely attests the eminence which Mr. Carr has attained in the State than the recognition of it by the Assembly of the State of New York in inviting him to pronounce in its chamber the eulogy upon its beloved speaker, S. Frederick Nixon, upon the memorial occasion dignified by the attendance of the Governor, the Senate and the judges of the Court of Appeals. In that august presence Mr. Carr, defending the prerogatives of the State, said:

"However much we take pride in the nation's greatness and power we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that in some way, not easy to understand, the Federal Government of which we constitute no mean part, has been steadily encroaching upon the province of the State, and year by year the waves of its rising power are biting away some part of the shore on which our feet should rest. . . . Preservation of the rights of the State, as the framers of the Constitution intended and provided, is as essential to the safety, security and perpetuity of the sisterhood of States as the armies that carry and defend the flag and the navies that patrol the sea and protect our harbors against the dangers of attack. Our State is an empire in and of itself. Dominion over it and control of its priceless interests are all our own, save to the narrow extent they were expressly yielded to give needed strength and requisite power for the protection of the whole."

This extract gives some idea of the force and clearness which characterize all Mr. Carr's public utterances, but no extract can give any conception of his extraordinary powers as an advocate. The assembly indeed had already enjoyed an unusual opportunity to witness their display, for Mr. Carr was easily the most conspicuous and imposing figure in a public trial of great importance conducted before it, in which he made the principal and prevailing argument. But it is perhaps in the appellate courts that Mr. Carr's abilities find their most congenial field of exercise. There his ready command of all the resources of a trained, vigorous and richly stored intellect enables him to discuss every proposition propounded by the court, or advanced by his opponent, with a breadth of reasoning, a fertility of illustration, an array of authority which never fail to arouse admiration and delight. Indeed in every argument or trial in which he engages he organizes from the outset an intellectual duel. One who is not prepared to cope with him on equal terms, or with a cause so strong that it overcomes the intellectual handicap, will find it prudent not to enter the lists with him.

When Mr. Carr resided in Port Jervis before going to Albany, where he is the general counsel for the Delaware and Hudson Company and where he is called as senior counsel into many important cases not at all connected with railroad litigation, such was his devotion to his profession that it was only in exciting political campaigns that he could yield himself to the demands of the platform. But in Albany so insistent and repeated have been the demands upon him that he has been compelled to yield more frequently, until now his reputation is firmly established as a platform speaker of rare attractiveness. A fair example of his after-dinner oratory may be found, in fit company and enduring form, in the book entitled "Modern Eloquence," edited by Speaker Thomas B. Reed; it being a response, at the banquet of the State Bar Association, in which, with a fine blending of humor and seriousness, he commends that recent revival of an ancient custom which has done so much already to revive and promote the dignity of the bench—the wearing by judges of the robe of office.