The History of Orange County New York

by Unknown

All the living lawyers thus far considered, except the sons and daughter, will very soon be passing from the scene. The pages that bear this imprint will scarcely be flung from the press before the lawyers whose now familiar names they carry forward to a generation that knows them not, will drop away, one by one, from their accustomed places. So true is this, so strong is the author's sense that only, by slight anticipation, do these pages commemorate the departed, that nothing has been set down here which could not be truthfully and becomingly said if they had gone before who yet, for a little, linger. This, indeed, suggests the chief reason why the present record, to be of any value, should include the living; for long before this publication is superseded by a rival or a successor the figures it portrays will have passed from action to remembrance.

In connection with this thought it is proper to point out that the sketches and estimates now published bear this further resemblance to veracious and posthumous biography—they have not been edited by the subjects. The system adopted in some modern compilations of permitting prominent men to write their own biographies, or of procuring from them the data for less sympathetic treatment, has not been followed here. Indeed, with a single accidental and insignificant exception, not one lawyer has any knowledge of the scope or purpose of this undertaking or has furnished any information available for use in it. He who carelessly takes up this volume to read about others will be covered with modest confusion to find himself included in it. This is an attempt not to let a man speak for himself, but to collect and crystallize in definite forms of expression the floating particles of contemporary judgment upon his character. It is for this reason, besides others, that so few specific dates and irrelevant facts are given. They have not been asked for. They are not needed. They do not fit with the scheme of this work, which aims, perhaps presumptuously, but still consistently, to be a gallery of portraits, not a table of statistics. Of what possible interest is it to know the number of a lawyer's children, or the building in which his office is located? Character and achievement are the things that count.

It will be convenient at this point to return to the consideration of the leading advocates now at the bar of the county. No one recognizes more than advocates themselves their frequent indebtedness to the great lawyers who, undisturbed by absorbing, distracting and exhausting trials, apply to life's complex and varying conditions the immutable principles of the common law. It implies no disparagement of Winfield and Gedney to assume that the one often leaned upon the judgment of his partner, William F. Sharpe, and that the other often sought the wise counsel of his esteemed relative, Joseph W. Gott. At the same time it cannot be doubted that public interest has always centered upon the trial lawyer, for the obvious reason that the open field, the public challenge, the combat of intellectual athletes, the palm of victory appeal strongly to the imagination and dramatic sense. There need, therefore, be no apology for making prominent in a popular work those who engage the larger share of merely popular interest.

There is no man at the bar of Orange County, or indeed anywhere, for whom the term colorless would be so inept as it would be for Judge Albert H. F. Seeger. He radiates color. He is the incarnation of sunshine. He is the forerunner of gladness, sounding a proclamation of hope and good cheer wherever he goes. No one would suppose that he ever had a care or sorrow. Yet he must have had his share. He performs more perfectly than any man I ever knew that mission which Robert Louis Stevenson glorifies when he says:

"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good will; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the great theorem of the livableness of life."

But Judge Seeger can also prove the forty-seventh proposition. He can usually prove anything he sets out to prove, as lawyers opposed to him have often found to their dismay. And even when the law and the facts are all against him and you have him thoroughly beaten, according, to all the rules of the game, there will still be three to six jurors who strangely refuse to believe that anything but infallible argument could emanate from a personality so radiant. Not that his propositions always need the support of his personality, upon which, indeed, he never consciously presumes. He always builds up a strong, solid, telling, convincing argument, delivered with unaffected earnestness and artless sincerity.

And his sincerity really is artless. While he is personally the most popular man in Orange County and while such preeminence can only be attained by the use of popular arts, yet in his case they are entirely legitimate and unstudied. He really does feel kindness when he seems to. He really is interested in the things which interest others. He really does love their babies, their dogs, their horses—anything, in fact, but their automobiles. His bubbling spirits and effervescent mirth, his ready wit and sparkling sally, the ring of his laughter and the spell of his bonhomie are all the genuine expression of a rich, ardent and impressionable nature.

It might be thought that such a man would be a time-server. Far from it. There is not a trace of the demagogue in his composition. Much as he would naturally desire to retain his remarkable popularity he would fling it all away, if necessary, in the performance of his duty or in the defense of law and order. He showed this unmistakably when as district attorney he boldly held at bay the lawless mob, at a personal risk which his official duties did not call upon him to incur. Knowing then that he would soon be a candidate for a higher office he cared not whether he made friends or enemies, whether he lost votes or gained them; he simply saw his duty and went straight for it. As it was, the very forces he antagonized respected him. When this genial friend, this blithe companion became transformed into the stern, unyielding, inexorable officer of the law the very mob he awed retired to worship him, and when the time came it voted for him.

This mingling in Judge Seeger's character of the sterner and softer elements, of courage and tenderness, manliness and simplicity, firmness and forgiveness, has inspired in the people of Orange County a respect and affection such as rarely attends upon a public man. His election to the office of county judge was inevitable whether the "organization" had been friendly or not. If it constitutes high qualifications for this responsible position to possess a character noble and sincere, a disposition just and fair, a judgment sound and true, a mind well trained and informed, a knowledge of the law wide and various, a knowledge of human nature keen and close, a sense of public duty deep and earnest, then is the county of Orange indeed fortunate that a judge as respected as John J. Beattie should be followed by a successor so worthy as Albert H. F. Seeger.

From painting to stenography; from stenography to the law; from the law to the recovery of a judgment for eight hundred thousand dollars in 1906—that is the condensed history of Thomas Watts. As the painting was, not of pictures but, of houses, it will readily be seen that he is the most consummate embodiment of that familiar phrase, the self-made man, that the Orange County bar possesses. After working all day painting, often walking back several miles to his home, he spent his evenings studying stenography. After acquiring this art and while pursuing its practice as a court stenographer he studied law assiduously, following carefully also the course of every case that came under his notice in court and drawing out the able judges and lawyers whom he met in conversation that was not less instructive than edifying.