Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/26

22 good working order. Judge Pettis, from all that can be learned, was not favorably impressed with the district assigned to him and he returned to his home in Pennsylvania without ever having held a single session of court. Allan A. Bradford was appointed to fill the vacancy created by his resignation.

Judges Hall and Armour entered upon their duties soon after they had qualified. Hall remained in office two years, holding court in Denver. His successor was Stephen H. Harding, a former governor of Utah; a man who proved very unpopular, not alone with the attorneys practicing at the law, but with the people of his district generally.

Unpopular as Harding was, still he was better liked than Judge Armour, the third of President Lincoln's original appointees. Armour was a very eccentric man and managed to make himself very unpopular by his manners and his decisions from the bench. Lawyers who had cases pending in his court absolutely refused to try them before him. They either sought to remove them to one of the two other districts, on changes of venue, or had them continued and continued again, in hopes that the judge would resign or be removed. Petitions for his removal were circulated but without result.

Matters finally reached such a stage that the territorial legislature took cognizance of the enmity of the attorneys towards Judge Armour. A law was enacted creating a judicial district of Costilla and Conejos counties, inhabited largely by Mexicans. Judge Armour was assigned to this district, but the legislators had reckoned without their host.

Instead of taking up his residence in the new district, Judge Armour refused pointblank to go. He remained at Central City drawing his salary and enjoying life generally until 1865, when he left the state. In the same year Justice Harding resigned and emulated Judge Armour's example.

More than a year elapsed from the day that they had been inducted into office before the three judges were called upon to sit as a supreme court. With the slate swept clear,