Page:Bench and bar of Colorado - 1917.djvu/28

24 and one of the associate judges would "sit on" the other associate justice. As a rule the judges got along very well and managed to dispose of all appeals in a manner satisfactory to all parties concerned, especially so after the original appointees had been replaced by better and abler men.

Holding of court in the early Colorado days was quite often difficult, if not positively dangerous. With no railroads to carry them to the towns, in which they were to hold court, the judges were compelled to use stages or private conveyances. The country was infested with hostile Indians and made unsafe by desperate characters who had fled from Eastern cities and sought refuge in the mountain fastnesses. As a result it often became necessary to provide the judges with armed escorts when they started to make the rounds of their districts. Accommodations, so far as courtrooms and as well as lodgings were concerned, were of the most primitive order.

The first three judges had retired from the bench by 1865. Judge Bradford, who had been appointed to fill the vacancy created by Judge Pettis' resignation, relinquished his office in 1865. He was succeeded by Charles F. Holly. William H. Gale was named to take the place of Judge Armour when the latter decided to leave the territory and return to his home in the east. Holly and Gale were followed on the bench in 1866 by W. H. Gorsline and Christian S. Eyster. Chief Justice Harding resigned late in 1866, and Moses Hallett, then one of the youngest members of the territorial bar, was appointed to fill his place. Judges Gorsline and Eyster were succeeded by James B. Belford and Ebenezer T. Wells. Andrew W. Brazee succeeded Judge Belford and Amherst W. Stone was appointed in place of Judge Wells. Chief Justice Hallett and Justices Brazee and Stone were on the bench when Colorado was admitted to the Union as a state.

The names of Justices Hallett, Wells and Belford are remembered by many of the attorneys of the present generation. Justice Hallett, appointed to the bench through