Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 07.pdf/613

570 of his class. In 1893 he was elected a member of the board of overseers.

, the fourth associate justice, was born in New Gloucester, Maine, on the 18th of May, 1842. He is the youngest son of Peter and Betsey (Hawes) Haskell, and was reared as a farmer's boy. His paternal ancestors were Welshmen: two brothers of whom immigrated to Cape Ann from Wales. Some of their descendants settled in New Gloucester before the Revolution.

Peter Haskell's mother, Salome Parsons, was the daughter of Col. Isaac Parsons of New Gloucester and a sister of the mother of Peleg W. and Theophilus Chandler, well known Boston lawyers. Col. Parsons was an own cousin of Chief-Justice Parsons, and removed from Gloucester, Mass., to New Gloucester, Maine, then a frontier town, about 1760.

Judge Haskell's mother was the daughter of Capt. Thomas and Betsey (Whitman) Hawes of Welfleet. She and Chief-Justice Whitman (ante p. 470) were the only children of Josiah Whitman of Bridgewater, Mass., who died while they were young.

Judge Haskell fitted to enter Bowdoin College in 1862, but instead entered the 25th Maine Regiment of Infantry, Col. Francis Fessenden, and served as a non-commissioned officer with his regiment in Virginia. It was a nine months' regiment, and after his discharge, in the summer of 1863, he entered the office of Judge Morrill, of Auburn, Androscoggin County, as a student at law. He was admitted to the Bar of that county, in 1865. For a time he remained with his instructor, but moved to Portland in 1866, where he has ever since resided, and continued an active practice of his profession until called to the bench, March 31, 1884, succeeding Hon. Joseph W. Symonds, who had resigned. He has held no political office outside the line of his profession, except as a member of the city council of Portland. He served as county attorney for a part of a term, in 1870, being appointed by the court to fill a vacancy, and again in 1878; and was appointed to the office by the Governor in 1879, serving until the expiration of the term. He was also a commissioner of the Circuit Court of the United States. He was for a time the law partner of the late Judge Goddard of the Superior Court for Cumberland County, and of Hon. W. W. Thomas, Jr., late our Minister to Sweden, and of Hon. Nathan Webb at the time he was appointed United States District Judge for Maine in 1882.

In 1881 he was appointed by Governor Plaisted upon a commission to investigate abuses in the Reform School. He made a separate report that was full and exhaustive; and he drew and secured the passage of the law, approved March 15, 1883, c. 250, now governing that institution, establishing regulations for the prevention of abuses, establishing a mechanical school, and providing for a woman visitor and also a letter-box for the boys where they can deposit letters without scrutiny of the officers of the school.

He early developed in the profession an aptitude for pleadings, and became proficient and successful in the branches of the law relating to admiralty, corporations, bankruptcy, criminal and commercial law. "Don't do too much for your boys," said a shrewd merchant, " if you expect them to make anything of themselves." No doubt, confidence and self-reliance come largely in that way, but the successful lawyer must have a fearless and independent spirit to build upon; and I found that was the case with Judge Haskell the first time that I saw him. It was when I was holding a bankrupt court as register in a neighboring city, he appeared in opposition to a very able lawyer, skilled in all the tactics that long practice affords, who sought to protect a preferential mortgage. The proceedings before me consisted in taking examinations of witnesses