Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 04.pdf/628

The Supreme Court of North Carolina. It bears the impress of the present, but remains to instruct the future, as imprints of a passing shower of ages ago are pre served in strata of sandstone. In like manner, much of the work shaped out by the conjoined labor of bench and bar will have its effect long ages after the men of this generation and all memory of them "Like thin streaks of morning cloud shall have melted into the infinite azure of the past." To fix for a few fleeting moments longer the memory of a few of the laborers ere their names shall already sound strange in the courts and the land where they labored, is the object of sketches such as these. Chief-Justice Taylor was born in England; Chief-Justice Ruffin, Judges Hall and Shep herd were born in Virginia; Judge Boyden in Massachusetts. The other twenty-five were native North Carolinians. Judge Settle was the youngest judge, having ascended the bench at thirty-seven. Next came the elder Ruffin, Pearson, Murphey, Shepherd, and Clark, who all went on at forty-two or forty-three. Judge Nash

591

went on at sixty-three, and was in his seventy-second year when made Chief-Jus tice. Judge Smith went on the bench at sixty-five, Ashe at sixty-six, Boyden at seventy-four, and yet served two and a half years. Smith and Ashe were each in their seventy-fifth year when elected the second time. The longest service was by Pearson, twenty-nine years on the court, and the elder Ruffin, near twenty-five years. Each of these was nineteen years Chief-Justice. As to religious persuasion, six were Presby terians, — Nash, Reade, Dick, Smith, Avery, and Burwell; two Roman Catholics, — Gas ton and Manly; two Methodists, — Merrimon and Clark; one Baptist, — Faircloth; one or possibly two were members of no church; and the remaining eighteen, being nearly two thirds of the whole number, have been Episcopalians.1 1 The death of Chief-Justice Mcrrimon occurring after this article was in type, a more lengthy sketch of him which was sent us could not be inserted. A notice of him, however, will be found in our obituary columns. In the first column of Part I. (October number) of this arti cle the total number of judges there given as twenty-nine should be changed to thirty. — Ed.