Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/393

 HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY.

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��by the better rule, may I not say, he lived out

the full measure of his years ? For we should

remember that —

" ' We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives, Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.' "

The first law student in Mansfield was Andrew Cofflnberry, who studied with Mr. May. He was quite an important young man in the young city, making acquaintances easily and rapidly, and becoming rather popular among the backwoodsmen of that day. He was also one of the first school teachers, and generally went 1\y the name of Count Coffin- berry. When he became a full-fledged lawyer, he was, one day, for some eccentricity, called by Judge Osborne, " Count Puffendorf," which name afterward clung to him for some years.

Among the lawyers who traveled with the court in those days, and Wsited Mansfield fre- quently, were William Stanberry, of Newark, who died in January, 1873, at the ripe age of eighty-five ; Hosmer Curtis and Samuel Mott, of Mount Vernon ; Alexander Harper and Elijah Mirwine, of Zanesville, and Charles T. Sherman, of Lancaster. Hosmer Curtis was the first Prosecuting Attorney, and was succeeded by Mr. May in 1816. Mr. May was succeeded by William B. Raymond, of Wooster.

The Judges then held their office seven years, and the successive President Judges of the Court of Common Pleas, up to the formation of the constitution in 1851, were William Wil- son, of Licking ; fieorge Tod (father of the late Gov. Tod), of Trumbull ; Harper, of Mus- kingum ; Lane and Higgins, of Huron, and Ezra Dean, of Wayne, the last of whom had been a lieutenant in the LTnited States army, and had fought at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane.

One of the early lawyers in Mansfield was Gen. William McLaughlin, a large-hearted

��Irishman, who came about the year 1827, from Canton. He is well remembered as a soldier and a patriot. He was generous and brave to a fault ; a man of great energy and activity ; making hosts of friends, laying down his life finally for his fiag, in the war of the rebellion.

When McLaughlin first arrived in Mansfield, hunting was quite an occupation among many of the pioneers, and, having a good deal of con- fidence in his powers, in whatever way he chose to exercise them, he desired to have it generally understood that he was a great hunter, though it does not appear that his exploits in that direction were marvelous. One day, after a tramp in the woods, he walked proudly into the village, with what he sup- posed was a wild turkej' slung over his shoul- der. Thomas B. Andrews was working on the roof of the first brick court house at the time, and he says McLaughlin swung his hat and cheered, holding up to view the trophy of his prowess as a hunter. Upon examination, however, the turkey turned out to be a turkey buzzard. The General was, at first, somewhat indignant at this verdict by his friends, pro- testing that it was a wild turkey, that his friends were blockheads, who did not know a turkey from a buzzard, and that he proposed having roast turkey for dinner.

Finally becoming convinced of his error, he laughed as heartily as any, and concluded the cheapest way out of the scrape was to " set up the camphene" for the crowd.

He raised a company and served honorably through the Mexican war ; and when the war of the rebellion broke out, he oflered the first full company to the Governor of the State for three months' service. He afterward went into the three-3'ears service, but being some- what advanced in years, could not withstand the fatigues and exposures of a soldier's life. Dying in camp "with the harness on,"' he was brouffht home and buried with the honors of

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