Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 09.pdf/45

 24

In constituting this court, Charles Dunn was appointed chief justice, and William C. Frazier and David Irvin were associate judges. CHARLES DUNN, the first chief justice, was born at Bullitt Old Licks, in Bullitt County, Kentucky, December 28, 1799. His father was from Dublin, Ireland, and his mother, Amy Burks, was a native of Virginia, one of the Burks of Burks' Valley. He was sent to school at Louisville, Kentucky, when nine years of age. After nine years there he was called home and sent on a business tour to Virginia, Maryland and Washington. He then began the reading of law with Worden Pope, a prominent lawyer of Louisville, and later pursued his studies at Frankfort with the eminent John Pope, then secretary of state, and who was the first law professor in the Transylvania University at Lexington. Young Dunn went to Illinois in 1819, and there continued his law studies under the direction of Nathaniel Pope, then district judge of the United States for the District of Illinois. In 1820, he and Sidney Bréese, afterwards chief justice of Illinois, were to gether admitted to the bar. He practiced law at Jonesboro, Union County, and Golconda in Pope County, in Illinois, for several years, and was for five years chief clerk of the house of representatives of that State. He also acted on the commission that surveyed and platted the first town of Chi cago, in 1829. In the early part of 1832 the Indian troubles, known in Illinois and Wisconsin as "the Black Hawk War," broke out. A requisition was made upon the governor of Illinois for troops to put down the uprising of the Indians under the resolute chief, Black Hawk, which, it will be remembered, called Abraham Lincoln into the service. The subject of this sketch raised a company of volunteers in Pope County; and in Posey's brigade of Colonel John Ewing's division he pushed on after the Indians, then on the

Rock River. Soon after an engagement with the Indians, in which the latter were defeated and routed, Captain Dunn pursued them, with his command, into Wisconsin. In what is now the town of Dunn, Dane County, he was shot and severely wounded in the groin by a cowardly sentinel, whose post he visited as officer of the day in making "the grand rounds" at midnight. On his approach the sentinel on duty, in alarm at the intrusion, without challenging the relief party, fired at them at a distance of ten paces, and ran. Dunn was supposed to be mortally wounded, and was taken back to Fort Dixon. He was for some time disabled, and, when sufficiently recov ered, he acted as assistant paymaster of the brigade. He afterwards served in the Illinois legislature in 1835; and in 1836 he was appointed by President Jackson as chief justice of the newly-created Territory of Wis consin. He arrived at Mineral Point July 4, 1836, and was sworn into office as part of the exercises of the " glorious Fourth." The court held its first session and organized at Belmont, in the assembly hall of the legislative council, a barn-like structure that then was called "the state house." The court met, chose a clerk and, on motion of one of the attorneys present, Thomas P. Burnett was appointed reporter. His labors are found in the one small volume known as "Burnett's Reports." In the division of judicial districts, Judge Dunn was assigned to the first district, em bracing the counties of Grant, Iowa, Lafay ette, Green and Dane, the southwest portion of the State, and then comparatively wealthy and populous by reason of the large leadmines then in successful operation. The duties were onerous, but so admirably dis charged as to make him exceedingly popu lar. One of the most dignified and polished of men, charming in manners and gracious in bearing, he was every inch the judge. An incident finds record that illustrates his fearlessness. In 1838 an atrocious murder