Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/259

several years he was President Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. In 1836 he was elected judge of the Supreme Court, serving seven years. He was a man of considerable ability, possessing especial literary attain ments. He was the author of a work entitled : "Considerations upon the Nature and Ten dency of Free Institutions," published in 1848, and of "An Essay on Ancient and Modern Literature." He died at Chillicothe, Ohio, March 8, 1863. Judge Grimke was a very reserved man, lived and died a bachelor, being known as a "woman hater." Matthew Birchard was born at Becket, Massachusetts, in 1803, and expired at War ren, Ohio, in 1876, at the age of seventythree. He was the son of Nathan and Mary Birchard, and his ancestors and those of exPresident Hayes were the same. He came to Ohio, at about the age of eight, with his parents, and settled near Warren, Ohio, where he continued to reside until his death. His education was obtained in the com mon schools of his adopted home. Judge Birchard read law with Colonel Roswell Stone, and was admitted to the bar in August, 1827, and opened an office at Warren, Ohio, and soon became a leading member of the Bar in that part of Ohio. In 1833 he was elected common pleas judge of the old third circuit, which office he held until appointed by President Jackson, Com missioner of the Land Office, and afterwards Solicitor of the Treasury at Washington, which place he held " until the days of log cabins and hard cider made the place alto gether too uncomfortable for so pronounced and active a Democrat." On his return to Warren he formed a partnership with Gover nor David Tod and Judge B. F. Hoffman under the firm name of Birchard, Tod & Hoffman, which partnership lasted until 1842, when Judge Birchard was elected to the Supreme Bench of Ohio. He served as a member of the Supreme Court until 1849,

the last two years of that time as Chief Justice. His opinions appear in the Ohio Reports from volumes twelve to seventeen inclusive. The opinions written by Judge Birchard are said to be among the clearest of any of those which appear in the Ohio Reports. He had the faculty of making correct ap plications of proper principles to the case or cases before him, in which respect he was the equal of any and the superior of many. He was not what is known as a case lawyer, and in his decisions he seldom refers to cases, relying on general principles; and reasoning from good sense and innate justice, he always presumed that to be equity which ought to be equity, and holding to that idea he nearly always reached a just and equitable conclu sion. It was said of Birchard that although, in the main, of an even temper, still there was a large degree of stubbornness in his make-up. To illustrate this side of his char acter a very good story is told of him : " On one occasion he was in a boat above the dam in the Mahoning River near Warren; the river was high and he was unable to manage the boat, which was rapidly drift ing over the dam upon the dangerous rocks below; friends on the bank shouted to him to jump out and swim ashore, but the more they shouted for him to jump the more he wouldn't; when his partner, Mr. Tod, re membering his peculiarities, yelled out, ' Stick to the boat, Birchard, stick to the boat; don't jump out!' Whereupon out he jumped, swam ashore and was saved." But when on the bench Judge Birchard was kind and considerate of the feelings of those around him; but relentless to wrong doers who persisted in their evil ways. Of him we may truly say : — ' ' Feared, but alone as freemen fear; Loved, but as freemen love alone; He waved the sceptre o'er his kind, By Nature's first great title — mind." Nathaniel C. Read was elected judge of the Supreme Court from Hamilton County