VOL. XII.
No. 9.
BOSTON.
SEPTEMBER, 1900.
EDWARDS PORTER SMITH. BY JAMES M. PERELES, JUDGE OF COUNTY COURT OF MILWAUKEE COUNTY, Wis. TOWARDS PORTER SMITH, whose J—-/ portrait graces the opposite page, was born in Burlington, Vermont, February 27, 1827. After attending the common schools, he entered college at Burlington, Vermont, where he remained two years and then he entered Union College at Schenectady, New York, from which he graduated in 1847. The writer, whose rare privilege it has been to edit this brief sketch of his friend's life, received the following letter from Gen. Edward Fitch Bullard, now residing in the City of New York, in regard to the career of Mr. Smith in his early years : "The writer became a resident of Waterford, N. Y., in 1838, where Edwards Por ter Smith then resided; he was then about eleven years of age and a student in the Academy under Prof. Tayler Lewis, one of the most distinguished linguists in the coun try, who became later a professor in the New York University, and during the last years of his life a professor in the Union College at Schenectady. "Mr. Smith afterwards entered Union College, where he was under Doctor Eliphalet Nott, one of the most distinguished teachers and college presidents of this coun try. Mr. Smith stood so high that he became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. "Although Mr. Smith was six years my junior, our relations were of the most inti mate character until he removed to Wiscon sin, about 1849. "His father, Reuben Smith, was an aus tere Presbyterian minister, and through his
mother he was a lineal descendant from Jonathan Edwards, but young Smith had none of that element in his nature. He was always genial, bubbling over with good hu mor and ready wit, and I never heard of his having an enemy during the eleven years of our acquaintance. "While he was a law student in my office, he gave evidence of the genius that made him famous in later years in his adopted home. After he left this State I never met him but once, which was at Beaver Dam, about 1856. "Notwithstanding our separation, an oc casional correspondence was kept up between us, and even in his business letters often a postscript would be added, gilded by some witticism." His career in the Vcst began in Milwau kee, where, together with the Hon. Gabriel Bouck, of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, he entered the law offices of Messrs. Finch & Lynde, and continued with that firm until the year 1 849, when, upon the advice of Mr. Azahcl Finch, he made Beaver Dam, Dodge County, Wisconsin, his home, and the field of his struggles and successes as a practitioner of the law. That he was thoroughly equipped to cope with the hard conditions of those pioneer days the sequel shows. He was a young man of high moral char acter and splendid attainments. His princi ples were of the noblest and most exalted. He was a tireless student and an indefatigable worker. His knowledge of the law was prodigious, and he reveled in its intricacies; he treated it as a science and loved it as the
