Vol. VI.
No. 12.
BOSTON.
December, 1894.
WM. CURTIS NOYES, LL.D. By A. Oakey Hall. "The Law: It has honored us, may we honor it." — The toast of Daniel Webster at the Charleston Bar dinner, May 10, 1847. THE tourist who may visit the beautiful village of Clinton in Oneida County, in midland New York, will undoubtedly be in troduced to the grounds there of Hamilton College, and be shown through its library building, in which he can examine a fine collection of about seven thousand volumes, that are mainly devoted to legal literature. His inquiries will develop that these con stitute a bequest to the institution from Wm. Curtis Noyes, whom the institution had honored with the deserved degree of LL.D. This inquiring visitor, if of this generation, will be informed in a tone of eulogistic pride that the donor died at New York City on the Christmas morning of 1864, while he was an acknowledged leader of its then remarkably distinguished Bar; and that from its then Nes tor, Charles O'Conor, at a memorial meeting of it, received this substantial epitaph : " Wm. Curtis Noyes honored the names of Christian and Gentleman, and his decease is a loss not only to his profession, but to the country." The traditions of Bench and Bar, not only in New York City, but in many States, keep his memory green; and although the com peers of his own age and generation have passed away, scores of the younger lawyers of his day remain to remember and praise his exact and comprehensive learning, his clear and precise apprehension of legal dis tinctions, and his dignity of manner that was brightened at all times by a courteous and urbane action, and under all circumstances of professional contest. Those junior lawyers
of his day also recall the especial kindly treatment that he ever awarded them during their infancy of practice; and they recall a famous bon mot of the late George Ticknor Curtis, — " Mr. Noyes might have well been prophetically christened William Courteous in view of that future characteristic at man hood." His middle name was the surname of his mother in her maidenhood, and his father was a New Englander who traced his Puritan ancestry to Rev. James Noyes of Newburyport, Mass., where the latter settled not many years succeeding the "Mayflower" advent. Young Noyes was born at the ancient Dutch village of Schodack, situate not far from Troy and Albany in New York State, where his parents (1805) resided. During his boyhood they removed to Oneida County, where business reverses to his father, caused by undue reliance upon the engagements of debtors, prevented the schoolboy from procuring a college educa tion. When only twelve years old he strayed into the court-room of a justice of the peace, and after listening to its procedures a while, returned home to surprise his parents with this announcement, — "I intend to become a lawyer." Only two years later he began legal studies in the office — not far from his Knickerbocker birthplace — of attorney Elsick, who, meeting a comrade of his circuit, the late Aaron Vanderpoel of Kinderhook, afterwards its member of Con gress and later a justice of the Superior 545
