Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/196

 The Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

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THE SUPREME COURT OF WISCONSIN. BY EDWIN E. BRYANT. IV.

WILLIAM PENN LYON. This vet eran jurist was born October 28, 1822, in the town of Chatham, Columbia County, New York. His father, Isaac Lyon, lived to a great age, hale and hearty to the last, and made his last days happy by the studies of the naturalist. The family were of English stock, their first ancestor in this country coming over in about 1640. Judge Lyon's parents were Quakers, and he was brought up in that faith. His early oppor tunities for education were meager. He at tended the district schools, such as they were, of the inland, rural settlements, until eleven years of age. Afterwards, he had one year's study at an academy in his native town. At the age of fifteen, he taught school in Columbia County. His youth made it a little hard for him to be sovereign over the unruly elements found in a country school, and his experience led him to con clude that "teaching was not his forte." In those days the clerk in the store was looked upon by the farm rustic as an important personage; and young Lyon sought em ployment in that field of enterprise. He was clerk in a grocery store in Al bany, New York, something near three years. Given a little leisure, he attended the sessions of the legislature and the courts, as his tastes turned in those directions. He heard with delight the speeches of such men as Erastus Root, Samuel Young, Judge Peckham the elder, Judge Harris, Ambrose L. Jordan, and many others then and since famous in New York law and politics. Their eloquence was a stimulant to his young ambition and led him to pursue a course of reading.

In 1841, when in his nineteenth year, he came with his father's family to Wisconsin and settled in what is now the town of Lyons, Walworth County, where he resided until 1850, working on a farm, and teaching school two winters. He began the study of law with George Gale, at Elkhorn, having read Blackstone and Kent in the intervals of toil and teaching. Close application to study brought on an inflammation of the eyes that drove him from his books, and he returned to manual labor. Working on a mill, then building, at $12 per month, he earned $100, and after a year of outdoor life, he returned with zest and good eye sight to the study of law, in the office of Judge Charles M. Baker, one of the lawyer pioneers of Wisconsin. In the spring of 1846, Lyon was admitted to the bar, in the district court of Walworth County, held by Judge Andrew G. Miller. That spring he was elected justice of the peace of the town of Hudson, now Lyons, and at once opened an office, and exercised his magistracy and practiced law, " in a small way," as he says. It was the day of small things then, and one could live on a small income measured by the money standard. His first year's in come was sixty dollars, his second one hun dred and eighty. This encouraged him to take a wife — a partnership which he al ways advises young lawyers to form. His third year's receipts were $400, and when in his fourth year's review $500 were in sight, it seemed that he was on the high way to affluence. In those days of cheap ness, these receipts provided amply for the modest needs of his household. He sedu lously pursued his studies, and his justice's