CHAPTER XXV - THE BAR

In the early history of Shelby county very much of the practice in the courts was looked after by Council Bluffs attorneys, who were frequently here representing clients. Among the out of town attorneys who, in the seventies and to some extent prior to that time, represented clients in the circuit and district courts at Harlan, were: Colonel Sapp, F. B. Hart, George F. Wrights, C. R. Scott, Major Joseph Lyman, Capt. D. W. Price, George Carson, W. S. Mayne and Flickinger Brothers, of Council Bluffs; Smith McPherson, of Red Oak, now a federal district judge; R. P. Foss, J. S. Hall, John Ledwich and J. G. Tipton, of Avoca; Frank Griffin, of Dunlap; Major A. R. Anderson, of Sidney, afterwards congressman for the eighth Iowa district; John W. Scott, Mr. Makepeace, Mr. Griggs and Mr. Temple, all of Atlantic.

A number of able men came to Harlan in the capacity of district attorney in the early days. It will be recalled that previous to the enactment of the law providing for a county attorney, the district attorney system prevailed, under which one prosecuting attorney attended court and examined witnesses before the grand jury and tried criminal cases in a great many counties during the year. Among the men who came to Harlan as such district attorneys were A. R. Anderson of Sidney, afterwards a representative in Congress; A. B. Thornell, of Sidney, one of the present district judges and candidate for re-election; and J. P. Conner, of Denison, subsequently district judge and a little later representative in Congress from the tenth district of Iowa.

Mr. Conner commenced coming to Harlan as district attorney on January 1, 1881, and he served in that office for four years. Later he came to Harlan as circuit judge for two years beginning in 1885. In a letter to the author, Mr. Conner says: “I recall some of the lawyers who were at the bar at that time, Platt Wicks, J. W. DeSilva, Smith & Cullison, D. O. Stuart, N. W. Macy, Warren Gammon. Most of these lawyers have either removed from Harlan or are now deceased. Webb Byers was just entering the practice at the time I left. The Harlan bar at that time was a strong one and compared favorably with any bar in the state.”

A. B. Thornell was elected district attorney for the thirteenth judicial district of Iowa in 1884, and entered upon his duties January 1, 1885, becoming district judge January 1, 1887, which office he has held continuously to date. Judge Thornell informs me that the attorneys practicing at the Harlan bar when he was elected district attorney were: Macy & Gammon, Smith & Cullison, J. E. Weaver, Beard & Myerly, Wicks & Burke, R. P. Foss, D. O. Stuart, John Wallace, and J. W. DeSilva.

While serving as district attorney, Judge Thornell drew the indictment in the murder trial in State of Iowa vs. Mendenhall and in the rather famous libel case brought against Oungst & Girton by reason of their local political verse. At the time he was district attorney there were both district and circuit courts; the circuit court had no criminal jurisdiction, but had exclusive jurisdiction of probate matters, and certain law and equity jurisdiction concurrent with the district court. The circuit court was abolished in April, 1886, and at that time the present fifteenth judicial district, including Shelby county, was organized. The office of the district attorney was abolished by constitutional amendment in 1886.

As Harlan, however, began to develop and to give promise of being a good town, a great many lawyers established themselves in Harlan, shortly before its incorporation, many more than the amount of business in sight could support. At one time there were no fewer than eighteen practitioners, almost double the present membership of the Harlan bar. In 1878, there were fifteen resident attorneys in Harlan.

Probably the first attorney to publish his card in a newspaper was A. C. Ford, who advertised in the New Idea that he was an attorney and counselor at Somida (Simoda) in 1858.

J. W. DeSilva, a New Yorker, appears to have been the next pioneer resident lawyer of Shelby county. He came to Harlan in 1869, shortly before the arrival of Platt Wicks, and first had an office in what has since been called “Old Harlan,” north of the present public square. Platt Wicks came in 1869 from Indiana. Joseph Stiles arrived in the fall of 1875 and opened an office in Harlan. In 1874 Robert P. Foss and Capt. John H. Louis (later representing the county in the General Assembly) were in practice together in Harlan under the firm name of Foss & Louis. In 1874 Will S. Burke was in practice with Platt Wicks, under the firm name of Wicks & Burke. J. E. Weaver became a member of the Harlan bar in 1875. A little later Lafe Thompson and E. Y. Greenleaf, among “Soap Creek’s (Davis county, Iowa) prolific sons,” entered the practice at Harlan, blazing the way for Thomas H. Smith (later state senator), whose shingle has been waving in the breezes of Shelby county since 1878. Mr. Smith formed a partnership with P. C. Truman, then in Harlan. A. K. Riley came in April, 1879, S. A. Burke in 1878, J. G. Myerly in January, 1880, D. O. Stuart in August, 1880, G. W. Cullison in January, 1881. Warren Gammon, a native of Maine, came to Harlan in 1879, and in November, 1881, formed a partnership with N. W. Macy, who had come to Harlan in November, 1879, the firm name being Macy & Gammon. Cyrus Beard came in October, 1878. He became a member of the firm of Beard & Myerly.

One of the most distinguished of the early attorneys was the Hon. Platt Wicks, a native of Indiana. He received a collegiate education from a Baptist college in his native state and had had some experience in the practice of law as a district prosecuting attorney in Indiana before coming to Harlan, which was in 1869. He represented Shelby county in the Legislature in the sessions of 1879 and 1881 and was a very prominent candidate for speaker of the house, a position which he lost by but a few votes. He, for many years, was a trustee of the Iowa State College at Ames. He was an able man and was prominent in all local affairs during his residence in Harlan and being a man of force and some brusqueness of manner, with many warm friends, he had also a number of rather bitter enemies. In 1890 he went to Pueblo, Colorado, which county he represented in the Legislature, where again he was a leader. He was elected as a free-silver Republican. He built and lived in the house in Harlan now occupied by Dr. E. A. Moore.

Hon. Thomas H. Smith, familiarly known as “Tobe,” is the oldest continuous practitioner in Shelby county, having come to Harlan in the spring of 1878, at which time he formed a partnership with P. C. Truman. Mr. Smith served as one term as state senator for the Cass-Shelby district. He, at one time, served as county attorney of Shelby county.

In November, 1879, there located in Harlan, an attorney who was to make his mark in western Iowa, Hon. N. W. Macy, now a resident of Pasadena, California. He came to Harlan from Adel, Iowa, where he had been practicing immediately following some years experience as a school teacher in eastern Iowa. Possessed of fine native ability and equipped with a college education both in liberal arts and law, received in the State University of Iowa at Iowa City, he at once took high rank at the Harlan bar. He first formed in 1879 a partnership with D. W. Smith. He later formed a partnership with Warren Gammon. In 1888, he contested with Cyrus Beard for the delegation from Shelby county to the judicial convention, having at that time become a candidate for district judge of the fifteenth judicial district of Iowa. Being successful in carrying the delegation of Shelby county, his name was presented to the judicial convention held at Red Oak in August, 1888, where on the fifteenth ballot he was nominated. He then served continuously for about twenty years, with an exceptionally fine record, having few reversals of his decisions by the state supreme court.

Hon. Cyrus Beard, above referred to, coming to Harlan in October, 1878, was destined to attain high rank in his profession. For some years he was in practice at Harlan with J. G. Myerly, now a citizen of Des Moines, for some years its postmaster, and lately a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress. Moving to Wyoming, Mr. Beard was elected to a position as justice of the supreme court of that state, to which position he has been recently re-elected.

Another attorney who came from Adel, Iowa, at the same time that Judge Macy came, was D. W. Smith. Shortly after entering practice at Harlan, he became deputy treasurer of Iowa and did not again return to Harlan.

In August, 1880, D. O. Stuart came to Harlan from Des Moines. He was graduated from Simpson College in 1872 and has been continuously practicing in Harlan since coming here in 1880, and is second in point of longest continuous practice in Harlan. Mr. Stuart has tried many cases of importance.

In 1881, George W. Cullison began the practice of law in Harlan. He had previously been here as instructor in the Shelby county teachers’ institute, but had been admitted to the bar in southern Iowa in 1876. He had been graduated from the State Normal School of Missouri at Kirksville in 1870 and had much more than a local reputation as a teacher in Iowa. In January, 1881, he bought out the partnership interest of Attorney P. C. Truman and thereupon became a partner of Thomas H. Smith, under the firm name of Smith & Cullison, which for many years was engaged in very important litigation in Shelby county and in other counties. Mr. Cullison was last fall a candidate for district judge on the non-partisan ticket.

D. S. Irwin, who came to Greeley township, Shelby county, in 1870, was admitted to the bar at circuit court in Harlan in March, 1881, and for some years practiced law at Irwin, Iowa, where he yet resides. In 1870, he wrote some interesting chapters on Shelby county history for the Shelby County Record.

Probably the first young man who grew up in Shelby county to be admitted to the bar was Jesse B. Whitney, who began the practice of law in Harlan in 1887. He subsequently served two terms as county attorney of Shelby county.

In 1888, Hon. H. W. Byers, a man destined to occupy a large place at the Iowa bar and in the Republican politics of Iowa, was admitted to the practice of law. He succeeded largely to the practice of Macy & Gammon when Mr. Macy went on the district bench. In 1890 he formed a partnership with Edmund Lockwood, subsequently a very active mayor of Harlan, who had a superior legal education received in the law departments of the University of Michigan and in the University of Columbia. This firm was on one or the other side of the most important litigation in Shelby county for about fifteen years. Mr. Byers served two terms in the General Assembly of Iowa, was unanimously elected speaker of the House, served three terms as attorney-general of Iowa, was temporary chairman of one state Republican convention of Iowa, was a prominent candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress from the ninth district, and is now corporation counsel of the city of Des Moines.

In 1891, two other young men brought up in the county, T. R. Mockler and C. H. Whitney, were admitted to the bar and began practicing in Harlan. Mr. Mockler served two terms as county attorney, subsequently moving to Bismark, North Dakota, where he now resides. He was elected to the North Dakota Legislature as a Republican and is now prominent in the political and legal affairs of North Dakota. Mr. Whitney served as county attorney and removing to Nebraska became county judge at Hartington, Nebraska and later was Democratic candidate for attorney-general of that state. He now resides in California.

In 1902, two young men began their legal careers in Shelby county, Will Pomeroy, son of R. M. Pomeroy, at Shelby, and Tom C. Smith at Harlan. Mr. Smith is a son of the famous pioneer attorney of Harrison county, Hon. “Joe” Smith. Both of these young men are in practice elsewhere, Tom C. Smith having served as county attorney of Harrison county, and Mr. Pomeroy in the office of prosecuting attorney in an Oklahoma county, in which state he now resides. Another bright young man who began the practice of law in Harlan a little later was Dan R. Perkins, who was in partnership with Hon. Thomas H. Smith. Mr. Perkins removed to North Dakota where he held for some years the position of county judge of his county.

Two brilliant young students of law received early guidance in the law office of Byers & Lockwood. One was H. P. Burke, a son of John T. Burke, an early pioneer of Douglas township; the other, Viggo Lyngby, a native of Denmark and graduate of the law department of the famous University Copenhagen. Mr. Burke is now and has been for some years one of the best known district judges of the state of Colorado, and Mr. Lyngby is practicing law in Council Bluffs and is Danish vice-consul for Iowa.

Edward S. White, a son of J. W. White, of Jackson township, immediately after graduation from the law department of the University of Michigan in 1902, entered the practice of law at Harlan. Through the kindness of the people of Shelby county he was county attorney of Shelby county for three terms, and at present is city solicitor of Harlan and engaged in general practice of the law.

For several years L. B. Robinson, formerly of Oakland, Iowa, was in partnership with G. W. Cullison under the firm name of Cullison & Robinson. Mr. Robinson was mayor of Harlan for some time and as such officer rendered very careful and effective service.

In 1904 James C. Byers (a son of H. W. Byers) after graduation from the University of Michigan began the practice of law at Harlan in the firm of his father, the name of the firm then becoming Byers, Lockwood & Byers. James Byers became the mayor of Harlan. He is now practicing law at San Diego, California.

John P. Hertert, a son of E. M. Hertert, of Harlan, after graduation from the law department of the University of Michigan, began the practice of law at Harlan in 1907. He is the present county attorney of Shelby county, which office he has held for two terms. He was re-elected last fall.

Shelby C. Cullison, a son of G. W. Cullison, began the practice of law with his father in 1907 under the firm name of Cullison & Cullison, soon after graduation from the law department of the State University of Iowa.

V. H. Byers, a nephew of H. W. Byers, at once upon graduation from the law department of Drake University in 1912, became the Harlan partner of the firm of Byers & Byers. Lately this firm has taken into partnership Ernest M. Miller, a graduate of the law department of Drake University of the class of 1914. He is a son of Jerry Miller, late a resident of Elk Horn. The firm name is now Byers, Byers & Miller.

George B. Gunderson, an alumnus of both the literary and law departments of the State University of Iowa, in 1913 became a member of the firm of Smith & Gunderson. He is now mayor of Harlan and was last fall the Republican candidate for county attorney of Shelby county.

The resident attorneys of Harlan are, therefore, T. H. Smith, D. O. Stuart, G. W. Cullison, Shelby C. Cullison, J. B. Whitney, V. H. Byers, Ernest M. Miller, John P. Hertert, George B. Gunderson and E. S. White.