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Volume 057-2 - April 2003 (8 pages)
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Page: of 8
Niles Searls Thomas H. Caswell
Niles Searls, born December 22, 1825, in Albany County,
New York, studied law at the National Law School at
Cherry Valley, New York, and was admitted to the New
York bar in 1848. In the company of Charles Mulford,
Searls came overland with the gold rush. From Sacramento
Searls tried his luck at the diggings around Mormon Island.
Down with a fever, Searls spent a month at the Masons and
Oddfellows hospital at Sutter’s Fort.
Searls and Mulford worked at several jobs, eventually
trying mining again, this time along the Feather and Yuba
rivers. They made enough money to buy two mules and
start an express business between San Francisco and
Downieville. In 1850 they gave up the express business and
opened a book and stationery store in Nevada City. In this
bookstore, Searls first practiced law.
Searls ran unsuccessfully for Alcalde in 1850, but was
elected District Attorney in 1852, and Judge of the 14th Judicial District in 1855. Defeated in an election for a second
term in 1862, Searls returned to private practice. He moved
back to New York in 1864, only to return to Nevada City
with his family in 1869.
Searls was elected State Senator from Nevada County,
serving from 1877-1879. He won a place on the Debris
Commission of 1880, and thereafter became a Supreme
Court Commissioner in 1885, serving until 1887, when
Governor Bartlett appointed him Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Searls was defeated for reelection in
1889. From 1893 to 1899 he again held the position of Supreme Court Commissioner, after which time he retired
from public life, establishing a residence in Berkeley where
he remained until his death on April 27, 1907.
Searls was a member of E. K. Kane Lodge #72 and thereafter of Nevada Lodge #13. After his return to California he
reaffiliated as a Past Master, indicating that he associated
with a lodge in another jurisdiction and became Master of
that lodge. Searls became a Grand Lodge Officer in 1893
and, although he had moved to the Bay Area, retained his
membership in Nevada Lodge #13 until his death.
Born in Exeter, New York, on August 10, 1825, Thomas
Hubbard Caswell immigrated to Arkansas as an eighteenyear-old but soon moved to Bardstown, Kentucky where he
NCHS Bulletin April 2003
graduated from St. Mary’s College. Intending to open a law
practice in Arkansas, Caswell instead was lured to California by the discovery of gold.
Once here, Caswell found his primary interest to be the
law. He was elected the first Nevada County Judge in 1851
and was reelected to another four-year term in 1855. Caswell drafted and implemented the Nevada County Rules of
Court, thereafter used as a model by other California counties; these rules are, even now, considered to be the basis of
jurisprudence in California.
Caswell was initiated a Mason in Lafayette Lodge #29,
but completed his degrees in Nevada Lodge #13, the first
person to be made a Mason therein. Caswell was elected
Master of the lodge in 1868, 1869, 1870 and 1871. In 1873
he was elected an officer in the Grand Lodge of California
and held similar high office in the York Rite and Scottish
Rite bodies of Masonry.
Because of his Masonic interests, Caswell gave up his
practice and moved to San Francisco in1878. At the time of
his death, on November 13, 1900, Caswell appears to have
earned the greatest number of Masonic honors ever
awarded to a Mason in California.
William Morris Stewart, described by Effie Mona Mack
in her History of Nevada as a “lawyer by profession and an
empire builder by force of circumstance,’ was born in
Galen, New York, on August 9, 1825. With a quality prep-school education, Stewart entered Yale University but left a
year before graduation, having been seized with gold fever.
Not particularly successful at mining, Stewart turned to
gambling with even less success. After a short stint at mining again, Stewart joined the law office of John R. McConnell and was soon admitted to practice. Within months,
Stewart was appointed District Attorney of Nevada County
to complete the term of McConnell, who resigned after
being elected state Attorney General in 1853.
In 1854 Governor Bigler appointed Stewart to fill in for
McConnell while McConnell was temporarily out of state.
Thereafter Stewart, thinking he could do better for himself,
moved to San Francisco and entered into a partnership with
Henry S. Foote, a former U.S. Senator and Governor of
Mississippi. Stewart dissolved the partnership in 1856 and
returned to Nevada and Sierra counties, devoting himself to
mining law.
Stewart moved to Virginia City, Utah Territory, in 1860
and began what would be a forty-year career as a mining
law authority. He was elected to the U.S. Senate five times
between 1864 and 1899, and was a confidant of Presidents
Lincoln and Grant.
While in Washington, D.C. Stewart was approached by a
Virginia City acquaintance who needed a job to support a
literary ambition; Stewart got the man a job as a Senate
clerk. The acquaintance was Mark Twain—the literary ambition Innocents Abroad.
Stewart was diligent in promoting the interests of his
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