Oliver Young rose to conspicuous influence and weight in Port Jervis soon after his removal there in 1849. He lived during the period of political unrest which soon afterwards set in, and he was the foremost champion of anti-slavery principles in the county at a time when his sentiments were highly unpopular. He survived to see the once decried abolitionists acclaimed by the arbitrament of war and the verdict of history the most advanced statesmen of their century. He died in 1871.
This brings our narrative to the point of time from which the direct connection of the Orange County bar with the events of that stirring period and with the subsequent history of the county has been traced.
When it is considered that, in the sixty years preceding the publication of Eager's History of Orange County in 1847, no less than one hundred and seventy-five lawyers were admitted to practice in Orange County, their names appearing in the appendix to that volume; and that, in the sixty years now elapsed since its publication, fully as many more have been added to the number, it will readily be seen how impossible it is to undertake, in one department of a general county history, a sketch of many, among the living and the dead, whose estimable career it would be a pleasure to follow and depict. The purpose of this review and the treatment of its themes are entirely different from the plan and method adopted in Ruttenber's History of Orange County published in 1881, to which the reader is referred for such dates as may not be accessible here in respect to some of the lawyers who nourished before that time; while to Eager's history is referred the reader who may seek simply the names of those who were admitted to practice before 1847.
The bar of Orange County has also contributed to wider fields of activity many who have reflected high honor upon the place of their professional nativity. One of these was Benjamin F. Dunning, who, when he was in practice in Goshen in 1853, was invited by the leader of the New York bar, Charles O'Conor, to become associated with him. That veteran of the Orange County clerk's office, Charles G. Elliot, who has seen three generations of lawyers come upon the scene, told me that he was in the clerk's office when Mr. Dunning received the letter from Mr. O'Conor containing this proposition and saw him show it to Nathan Westcott, then a leading lawyer of the county and once its district attorney, whose brilliant career was interrupted by paralysis resulting from a fall from a wagon. Mr. Westcott handed the letter back to Mr. Dunning with the remark that Mr. Dunning would never live to receive a higher honor than this evidence of Mr. O'Conor's admiration and confidence. This confidence was abundantly justified in the long years of Mr. Dunning's association with Mr. O'Conor, which continued until Mr. O'Conor retired from practice.
William Fullerton also was invited by Charles O'Conor to New York, where he soon established a reputation as the most superb cross-examiner of his generation and as an advocate of remarkable gifts. He retained until his death his residence in Newburgh, where he had originally been associated in practice with James W. Fowler, whose honorable service as the surrogate of Orange County from 1851 to 1855 is still remembered.
John Duer, after several years of practice in Goshen, went in 1820 to New York, where he became a justice of the Superior Court and the author of several Valuable textbooks. His fame is preserved in his writings, though these give no conception of the effect of his noble presence and impassioned oratory.
Of course, the reputation which towers above that of any man ever born in Orange County is that of William H. Seward, who studied law in Goshen with John Duer and Ogden Hoffman. This is not because he was a greater lawyer than either of his preceptors but because his career as a United States senator in the period of excitement before the Civil War, his valuable services as Secretary of State in the crisis of our national life and his farseeing statesmanship in acquiring the territory of Alaska, have written his name large upon the roll of everlasting fame.
Ogden Hoffman, indeed, excelled him in all the attributes of a great lawyer. Admitted to the bar in 1818 and elected district attorney of Orange County in 1823, his transcendent abilities soon drew him to New York, where he transfixed the wondering gaze of its brilliant bar, which welcomed into its firmament this star of first magnitude. Benjamin D. Silliman, one of its leaders, in an address made in 1889, thus refers to him: "the fascinating Ogden Hoffman, the Erskine of our bar, at which he became powerful and eminent and captivated all by his art and his wonderful eloquence; his voice was music from the note of a lute to the blast of a bugle." Luther R. Marsh, when opposed to him once upon a trial, sought to forestall the dreaded effect of the speech in which Hoffman was to follow by describing him as one who "could rise upon the heaving exigencies of the moment, and at whose bidding instant creations and mighty embodying of thought and argument, sublime conceptions, glowing analogies and living imagery burst as by miracle from the deep of mind in overshadowing forms of majesty and power."
George Clinton and his nephew, DeWitt Clinton, are claimed by Ulster County, because New Windsor, the town in which they were born was, at the time, a part of Ulster County, it not having been set off to Orange County until 1799. But their fame has passed beyond the trivial rivalries of county pride. It belongs to the State and to the Nation. George Clinton died in 1812, vice-president of the United States. DeWitt Clinton died in 1828, governor of the State of New York.
In our own time, too. Orange County has contributed to the bar of the State many distinguished ornaments. The brilliant career of Lewis E. Carr, once its district attorney, but now a member of the Albany bar, has already been outlined.