Section 10:  Return to Clarion

When I came home I gathered up old letters and papers, burned most of them, tied up a few small packages and stowed them away in my trunk and in addition to these I found room for my clothes and all my earthly goods in an ordinary trunk. I was also fortified with fifty dollars and with this outfit about the 23d of October, 1840, I bid farewell to the old home and started out to pick my way in the world. I went down to Reedsville and about 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning took the stage for Bellefonte. I found John Daugherty and Samuel Lucas in the stage, two Brookville merchants who had been to Philadelphia buying goods. I had not met them when out there but we soon got acquainted and I found them good traveling companions. We got to Bellefonte in the evening and got our supper. The weather had turned in wet and cold with some snow. About dark we started out, a cold, disagreeable night ahead of us, to cross the mountain. It was 28 miles to Phillipsburg and it was broad day light when we got there. We warmed up, got breakfast, and started to Curwensville by way of Clearfield; found it a villainously bad road, through dreary pine bottoms, but from Clearfield was better up the sandy bottom and we got to Curwensville by dinner time. The further we advanced westwards, the worse the roads became and we did not get to Brookville till after night. My two traveling companions then left me. I ate my supper and about ten o'clock at night the stage pulled out for Clarion with not a passenger but myself. It was cold, dreary and muddy and this was my second night in the stage. Well, I snoozed and shivered and jolted along, occasionally woke up by my hat falling off or my head knocking against the side of the stage.

Still the stage crept along, and some time after two o'clock in the morning drew up in the mud in front of the Great Western Hotel, and I was back in Clarion and at that time all my aspirations and wishes in this world was to get a place to sleep. I was quickly in bed and sound asleep.

The next morning I was waked up by the landlord, Col. Coulter fixing up a stovepipe through the room, assisted by his brother-in-law, Joseph H. Patrick, but I had got several hours' sound sleep and I got up refreshed and ate my breakfast.

I found my friend, Jacques W. Johnston, boarding at the Western. I also found several resident lawyers had come during my absence. Alfred Gilmore had been appointed Prosecuting Attorney and was a boarder; also David B. Hays and John B. Butler. The former was a brother-in-law of John J. Pearson of Mercer, afterwards President Judge of the Dauphin County District and intended to practice in connection with John W. Howe of Franklin, who was well and favorably known west of the Clarion. Butler was from Butler County, had a family, but had not yet brought them here and was a boarder at the Western. William L. Alexander was editing and printing a democratic paper.

The Great Western Hotel where I was stopping had been opened for business, pretty well finished and filled up with boarders. A large cellar had been dug out under the building and a good deal of the clay thrown out in front and was tramped up into mud of unknown depth, and a few scattered boards laid on it for the benefit of pedestrians. There was not a foot of pavement in town. The fall had been wet and I never saw ground work up into soft, dirty mud more readily.

I think it was the 26th of October I arrived in Clarion. It required ten days' residence at that time to entitle an elector to vote, and the Presidential election was not ten days ahead and I lost my vote. It may have been a day or two later, I have no record of the precise day, but I think the election was about a week after my second advent to the county.

The room back of the Great Western barroom was the general sitting room of all the lawyers. Not one of them had an office. The first few days I looked around to see if I could rent one, but it was more than a month before Hays and I succeeded in renting the front part of Sloan's house, now used by Jesse D. Porter for his store. We got a bench and three chairs in it and we got some boards and built up a number of shelves against the wall and made a bookcase. I bought an old common stove for eight dollars and we got a pipe to it. Got a load of stove coal from old Billy Boreland, fixed up and hung out our shingles, and we were ready for business. Johnston had got the shell of a cabin up where Dr. Ross' office now stands, and had an office before we got into ours.

Along about the first of December, G. W. Lathy came out from Muncie, Northumberland County, and took up his boarding at the Western. He had some experience as a lawyer and Johnston took him into partnership and they soon had, at the side of the door in glaring gilt letters, "Johnston and Lathy, Atty's at Law."

Alfred Gilmore was building an office on the west side of the diamond (now occupied by John Sweeny). John B. Butler got in with the Commissioners in a little office on the south side of the diamond. We were soon all well acquainted and herded together for misery loves company.

I was soon familiar with the town, walked over it nearly every day and explored the woods on every side -- one day found an old field half a mile west of the graveyard beginning to grow up with white oak bushes. At another time four or five of us went down to where the upper bridge is now, got a skiff and crossed the river and explored around the old Myers Mill. A man named Wilson lived there and ran the mill. John B. Butler and I started out one day along what is now Seventh Avenue to explore south of the town. The bush out through our woods were very thick and by the time we got to the top of the hill above the spring we were glad to make our way out to the Greenville Road and give it up. I soon got an impression that if I stayed in Clarion I would have to live in the center of an interminable forest and thicket all my life.

Clients were few and far between, but one day an old fellow named Samuel Adams blundered on to me and told me he wanted a lawyer, that he had rented a carding mill from old Billy Chambers over where Mary Ann Furnace is, that they had quarreled and old Billy had sued him and they had referred the whole matter to David B. Long, Barnhart Martin, Esq., and Henry Sloan as arbitrators, and they were to meet at Shippensville a few days after that and he wanted me to try it for him. I gathered all the facts I could out of him, got the names of his witnesses and put them in a subpoena, told him to have all his witnesses there and I would be on hand. My friend, Johnston, was on the other side and had gotten up a technical question of law on the appointment of the referees, and he felt sure of blowing up the case that he told around to the other members of the bar and soon came to my ears. I did not at all feel alarmed about it if my arbitrators were sensible men.

When the day arrived, Johnston and I rode over together on horse back, he carrying a bundle done up in paper that I had no difficulty in deciphering as Purdon's Digest -- I went unfortified with any books. I was introduced to our arbitrators and found at once that they were intelligent business men. Martin was an old Justice of the Peace -- a fine scholar, could write and talk French and German better than English. Well, Johnston's law point did not catch, which greatly disconcerted him, and we called witness after witness and made out a stronger case than I expected. Relying on his technicality, the defendant could not make a very formidable case, for indeed he had but one or two witnesses and they did him no good. By the time the evidence was through and Johnston had concluded for the defense, I thought I knew my arbitrators and the case pretty well, and I summed up by recalling the testimony and dwelt carefully on that part, showing outrage and oppression on the part of the defendant, and that in the face of a solemn contract the plaintiff had been violently thrown out of the mill at the beginning of winter, without notice or a chance of getting other work, that he was poor and had a family to support, and that ninety-nine dollars was the least that my client ought to get. They retired, and in a short time brought me in an award of eighty-eight dollars. This made me feel pretty comfortable for I had now some chance of fees (Adams could have paid me none if I had not been successful). Johnston took it in pretty good part, but it set old Mr. Chambers in a towering passion and he immediately appealed the case to court.

That arbitration was of a good deal of use to me. There were a good many people there and I got acquainted and got business in the neighborhood afterwards. Barnhart Martin settled a number of estates west of the river and I soon after became his attorney and we settled a good many estates together. I believe I was his lawyer till the day of his death, or as long as he did business. For a man that knew as much as he did, he was a very modest and upright man. Like most of my old friends, the sod has long since been green over his grave, though he lived to a good old age.

This was my first case in Clarion and I may as well tell here what became of it. In a short time after the trial, Johnston got the appeal and entered it. I immediately filed a declaration and got him to enter a plea and put it down for trial at the following February court. By that time Lathy was with Johnston and I knew would make a more formidable fight, but I determined to try it by myself, though the old lawyers from Brookville, Kittanning, Butler and Franklin were there and I knew it would be very embarrassing to me to have so many present that knew more than I did. It was the only case on the list and the first case tried in the county. Well, I did try it, but felt intolerably awkward in displaying myself before such a crowd for the court house was full, and I blundered through the case in a manner very unsatisfactory to myself, but I got through with it and argued it to the jury as well as I could and the jury took pity on me and gave me a verdict of ninety-five dollars.

Lathy was very indignant and took a writ of error to the Supreme Court, and as I had not been two years a lawyer, I got John W. Howe to attend to it for me in the Supreme Court in October, 1841, and it was affirmed and I made old Billy pay the $95 and all the costs. I think I kept for fees about fifty dollars, and thus ended the first case tried on the civil list in Clarion County.