By S. Sponte, Esq.
Like most lawyers, I have developed a healthy respect for the past, for history, and I have learned to practice law with one eye constantly cast over my shoulder to the rear, the better by which to be unsurprised by old cases waiting in ambush. Such a posture also helps to avoid old clients of the same bent.
Therefore it was with more than a little interest that I recently responded to a request from a favorite colleague of mine to review some material he had gathered over many years pertaining to the illustrious history of our local bench and bar, the notion being that I might set some of it down for posterity. Obviously he believed I had the intellect and the talent necessary to make a worthy project of it. Also obviously, he was unfamiliar with my work.
Nevertheless I spent many hours reading the material he had collected. Contained therein were the accounts of, the actual comings and goings of lawyers and judges, long since gone, who had heretofore been to me but names and faces on old group bar association photographs, local legends only, but legends nevertheless.
The more I read, the more each one danced before my mind, argued silently before my ears, the spirit of each as alive as if their bodies were as well. There was Crawford and Moore, the first judges, Brackenridge, so eloquent, Addison and Young, judges of great renown, the latter a Scottish laird, and Alexander, of whom it was said he could and frequently did quote Shakespeare from memory at every civil trial. There were many others too, each one eloquent, brilliant or illustrious, every one a legend.
If the accounts are to be believed, it must have been a golden age for lawyers then, a time when a lawyer did not simply die, he “fell into the sleep which knows no waking.” Lawyers then were not long-winded, they were magnificent orators, they were not devious, they were brilliant, not gladiators, but knights.
Yet something was amiss. Could it really have been so that there was a time when lawyers were actually all respected, nay, revered? Did they achieve, through some sort of spiritual alchemy, a sense of nobility, the formula for which has been lost to the current generation? Were our predecessors really dei legis from the court of Olympus, each and every one? My God, wasn’t there a single stumblebum in the bunch?
Believing as I do that the past can’t possibly be that much different from the present, I was determined to find some form of truth. Accordingly, I threw myself into my research with feckless abandon, just as if it were a brief. I scoured the newspaper files, old bar records, history books and yellowed dockets looking for the tracks, and piece by piece, I found out.
Yes, some of those lawyers were brilliant, but some were less so. Some indeed were men of great learning and honor, others of a more modest leaning. All were men of substance, although the composition of the substance varied. What follows then is the truth about some of our predecessors less well known, less chronicled than the others, those whose reputations are sustained for more ordinary reasons. From this, you may draw hope that you too may have the stuff of which legends are made.
THE HON. EZEKIAL GRITCH – one of several judges in pre-revolutionary times who rode the frontier circuit on horseback. He was given to collecting road apples on his travels to fling at lawyers during trial thereby instituting the practice known today as “delivering the option.”
JEREMIAH TOUPEE – a defender of unpopular causes, he is best remembered for obtaining the acquittal of a tribe of Indians accused of scalping an entire village. Paid a substantial fee for his efforts, he thereafter retired to market and sell the product which, to this day, bears his name. Not to be confused with Zebikiah Toupee, co-founder of the Whig Party.
EZRA POUNDIT – a paragon of accomplishment, he was simultaneously a physician (MD), an attorney (JD), a violinist (VD) and a shipping magnate (UPS). At midlife, he entered divinity school in search of yet another degree (DD), but he met, courted and married a frontier stripper (DeeDee) who promptly stripped him of his wealth, reputation and self-respect, leaving him no choice but to move to Cleveland.
HERMIONE YENTL – The first female lawyer east of the Youghiogheny, Herman, as she was known to her friends, was obliged to assume the dress and mannerisms of a man in order to participate in a profession at that time still closed to women. So persuasive and artful was her masquerade that she was not found out until late in life when her wife and children noticed that her sideburns had fallen into her mutton chops.
THWACKER SHORTSTREET – a well-bred man from a well-breaded family, he developed a severe drinking problem which prevented him from finding any work until late in life when the first local exclusive country club was established.
ALEXANDER PRIVY BRICKHOUSE – in an effort to emulate an illustrious predecessor, he took to quoting Shakespeare during civil trials to shore up a flagging reputation. When he was discovered to have been actually quoting Bacon, he was excluded from practice before the courts, thus becoming the first local lawyer to be disBard.
QUARRY C. FREGIT – Well known as a title lawyer, he maintained that title disputes, like disputes of honor, should be resolved by pistols at ten paces, an idea that never quite caught on with the landed gentry. Shot in the mouth in a dispute over mechanic’s liens, he retired and on his deathbed was heard to say nothing at all.
Copyright 1983 – S. Sponte, Esq.