Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/726

 The Vol. XIX.

No. 12

Green BOSTON

GEORGE

Bag December, 1907

HOADLY

By George Hoadly (Jr.) THE history of the state of Ohio in the nineteenth century, and particularly the last half of it, might be written in the biographies of the members of the bar of the state. Of these the subject of 'this sketch was one for more than fifty years, and an outline of his career may perhaps prove of interest to the bar of other states as well as that of Ohio where those who knew him are daily becoming fewer. George Hoadly was born in New Haven, Connecticut, July 31, 1826. On the father's side he came of a family of sturdy New England farmers. His grandfather had served as a captain in the Connecticut militia during the Saratoga campaign, while his father, also George Hoadly, was a lawyer and banker in New Haven and mayor of that city. On the mother's side he was de scended from Jonathan Edwards and from Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College, and he was a nephew of President Woolsey, also of Yale. In 1830 his parents removed to Cleve land, Ohio, where he was educated until prepared for college. In those days boys were prepared for college younger than now, and while schools and teachers in Cleveland may not have been equal to what they are to-day, still they had the advantage of greater concentration of study, so that he was prepared for college at fourteen and in 1840 entered Western Reserve College, then at Hudson, Ohio, in the class of 1844. In this case, however, as in many others, the influences that formed the man were not so much the school and college as the home, and, above all other things, the influence of his father, a graduate and former tutor in

Yale College, and a scholar and gentleman in the true sense of that much abused word. After graduating from college he spent a year at the Harvard Law School. At that time that school was directed by Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf, and those two great men had made a school which, without the elaborate apparatus of modern schools, still inspired and formed many great law yers. Among the students in the school during the year Mr. Hoadly spent there were Rutherford B. Hayes, afterward Presi dent of the United States, and John Lowell, for many years United States Judge for the district of Massachusetts. After leaving the law school he entered the office of Charles Converse of Janesville where he spent a year, and in 1846 he entered, as a student, the office of Chase and Ball in Cincinnati. In that office, as student, clerk and finally, in 1849, as junior partner he fomed a friendship with the head of the firm, Salmon Portland Chase, afterward Chief Justice, which ended only with that great man's life. To be the friend and associate of Salmon P. Chase meant to be in the thick of the irrepressible conflict. To us, living more than forty years after the close of the Civil War, this conflict is but a chapter of history happily closed, but to the men of that time, to Salmon P. Chase, to George Hoadly and to many others, some few of whom are still living, it was a matter of life and death. The sacrifices which such men as Chase made for their convictions are described by George Hoadly in his memorial address delivered at Cinncinati in 1886 on the occasion of the removal of «the remains