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Page: of 12
6 The Nevada County Nugget Wednesday, Aug. 23, 1972
3 °
we
T. G. Williams was elected city attorney of the municipal government above referred to.
Hon, William T. Barbour was appointed the first district judge of this district-then the tenth-and was subsequently elected for a full term.
J. B. Townsend was judge of the Municipal Court of St.
Louis, Mo., before coming here.
Hon. William H, Lyons was State Senator in 1852.
These are believed to be all of the lawyers who came
to Nevada City within the first two years of its settlement,
dating from the time when it was called, indifferently, "Deer
Creek Dry Diggings," and "Caldwell's Store." They held forth
in a court room supported by posts and enclosed with red
cloth. Hon. Niles Searls and John Anderson continued longest
in the county.
In 1852 came James Churchman and C. Wilson Hill; in
1853, H. C. Gardiner, A. B. Dibble, Joseph Conn, and William M, Stewart; in 1854, Thomas B. McFarland, Josiah Chandle, Bean, Francis J. Dunn, Charles A, Tweed, Aaron A,
Sargent, C. J, Lansing, Johns, Edward W. Roberts, and John
L Caldwell; in 1855, Addison C. Niles, David Belden, Henery ,
I Thorton, and C. A, Johnson. During the same years, or Soon
after, came also James K, Byrne, William F, Anderson, C,
F, Smith, J. S. Darpenter, S. H. Chase, Edward W. Mazlin,
M. Kirkpatrick, M. P. O'Connor, J. C. Deuel, and J. C. Palmer.
James Churchman was a brilliant and somewhat erratic
man. He was a contemporary and associate in illinoise of
man, He was a contemporary and associate in Dlinois of that.
famous school of lawyers in which were numbered Abraham
Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, E, F. Baker, Dick Yates, Lyman
Trumbull, and others, President Lincoln gave him the appointment as consul at Valparaiso.
Churchman was one of the best talkers at the Nevada bar;
but he was not a painstaking practitioner, and was often beaten
by men far his inferiors in natural ability. He once ree 1 from
the syllabus of a reported case to establish a propositiou. Dunn
was his antagonist, and read from the text of the case to show
that it did not sustain the syllabus; whereupon Churchman
argued at length that the latter, rather than the text, was the
authority. He held that the reporter, being there, and being an
officer of the court, would know what the court said and meant,
while the text might be full of the mistakes of the printers. His
Honor, Judge Searls, did not take this view of the matter.
A. B. Dibble, for years the head of the firm of Dibble &
Byrne, was a resident of Grass Valley, where he became
actively indentified with much of the litigation of his section
of the county, being accounted an excellent jury lawyer. He
was once nominated for Congress.
Hon, William M, Stewart studied law in McConnell's office,
and practiced here a number of years alone and as a member of
the firm of McConnell & Stewart. He was a man of energy and
intelligence, as his career shows. He was district attorney of
Nevada County and State attorney general. He removed to Nevada,
where he was a member of the Territorial legislature and of the
W.B. Lardner
History of Nev
Published it
constitutional convention. He was elected to the United States
Senate from that State in 1864, and again in 1869, serving in that
body eleven years.
When Stewart was district attorney, he prosecuted a man,
before the Court of Sessions, who had been indicted for mayhem
in biting off an ear. The trial developed that the prosecuting
witness had been the aggressor, and deserved what he got.
Stewart began to lose interest in the result of the case; but his
interest was revived by the testimony of Dr. J. R. Coryell, who
was introduced by the defense as an expert. The doctor swore
that, as the ear was not quite bitten off, it being left hanging by
a little skin, it would have been possible to save it. But, as the
victim was a laboring man, to whom time is valualbe, they had
cut it off to save the time it would take to cure it. Had it been
a gentleman's ear, they would have saved it. It was usual to
save gentlemen's ears, but to cut off laboring men's to save
time. Churchman, who defended, made an eloquent speech. When
he had concluded, Stewart arose and said tothe jury that the only
question in the case was whether laboring menhad a right to have