Authors and Writers Associated with Morristown Part 30

Chief Justice Whelpley may be justly ranked among important writers of the legal profession. His legal opinions found in the Law Reports are characterized by strength, independence and knowledge of the principles of law.

Hon. Jacob Vanatta.

In a city so honored in the number of its distinguished legal minds, it need not be a surprise to find such a man as Jacob Vanatta, but of only a few can it be said as was truly remarked of him: "His practice grew until, at the time of his death, it was probably the largest in the State. His reputation advanced with his practice, and for years he stood at the head of the New Jersey Bar, as an able, faithful, conscientious and untiring advocate and counsel. He may be truly called one of the greatest of corporation lawyers. He was for years the regular Counsel of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company, of the Central Railroad Company, and more or less of many other corporations, and his engagements have carried him frequently before the highest Courts of New York, Pennsylvania and of the United States Supreme Court".

The Rev. Rufus S. Green, D. D., said, in his beautiful funeral discourse: "Mr. Vanatta died at the age of fifty-four--an old man worn out by overwork". "Be warned", he continues, "by the sad example of him whom to-day you sincerely mourn of an exhausted brain and prematurely enfeebled body. Take needed rest, cessation from labor, and frequent holidays".

The character of Mr. Vanatta's talent was wholly different from that of Judge Whelpley. The one rose brilliantly and suddenly, driven out by the force of an inborn genius, the other attained to what he was through untiring industry and plodding labor.

"More than any man I have ever known, from his clerks.h.i.+p to his death", says Mr. Theodore Little, into whose office Mr. Vanatta entered a student in the year 1845, "he seemed to have engraved on his very heart the motto, '_Perseverantia vincit omnia_,' and in that sign he conquered and achieved his success".

Mr. Vanatta's published writings are mostly articles on political questions and many speeches and addresses, which were often reprinted. One of these in particular, made a profound impression. It was delivered at Rahway, when our civil war was threatening, and contained a strong argument and appeal for the Union.

Hon. George T. Werts.

Our present Governor of New Jersey, Hon. George T. Werts, was born at Hackettstown, N. J., March 24th, 1846, and was admitted to the bar in 1867.

He was Recorder of Morristown from May 1883 to 1885, and was elected Mayor in May 1886, again in 1888 and in 1890. During the session of the State Senate in 1889, he served as President of the Senate, and was re-elected Senator in the same year. During his time as Senator, he served on many of the most important Committees and the new Ballot Reform Law and the new License Law were both drafted by him; laws which embrace, perhaps, the most radical change of any recently enacted.

While Mayor of Morristown some of the most important ordinances of the city were of his drafting; indeed while Mayor, he paid particular attention to every ordinance drafted.

Early in 1892 he was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, resigning the offices of State Senator and Mayor of Morristown to accept this honor, and he resigned the position of Judge to accept that of Governor, to which office he was elected in November, 1892.

Many speeches and addresses of Governor Werts have been published in the metropolitan and State papers, and in pamphlet form. Several are scattered through large volumes containing the speeches and addresses of others.

These are mostly political, but some are on other subjects, and have been delivered before juries and at reunions, in the Senate, and on other occasions. Among these published papers are also opinions and decisions while Judge of the Supreme Court.

Joseph Fitz Randolph.

Mr. Randolph has issued a valuable work, known to us as "Jarman on Wills", 1881 and 1882, being the fifth American edition by Mr. Randolph and Mr.

William Talcott. This work adds a third volume to a famous two-volume English book.

In 1888, was issued "Randolph on Commercial Paper", which work is of three volumes and contains 3,300 pages on bills, notes, &c., and is considered by the legal profession to be quite exhaustive of the subject. "These", says the author, "are legal monsters into which lawyers dig and delve and which settle knotty questions no doubt, but which probably will not be thoroughly investigated by women, until Fas.h.i.+on or Famine shall drive them into the legal profession".

Again we may quote the author's words, when he says in his usual happy vein of humor, about all his important legal productions, that "they are a necessary nuisance to the maker's friends and the unwilling buyers, that there is no end of making many such, and that they might be written down in line, on a heavy page with some of his brother writers on other abstruse subjects and set in a minor key".

Edward Q. Keasbey.

In one of the large New York dailies of August 1892, we read the following: "Mr. Keasbey, the well known New Jersey lawyer, has some hundred pages on 'Electric Wires in Streets and Highways,' a new subject of growing importance." This refers to a law book published by Mr. Keasbey ent.i.tled "The Law of Electric Wires in streets and Highways", Callaghan and Co., Chicago. Mr. Keasbey has also edited _The New Jersey Law Journal_ since 1879 and _The Hospital Review_ since 1888.

SCIENTISTS.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL. D.

Nothing could be more romantic than the story of the Telegraph, the practical application of which began in Morristown, for it is morally certain that without the enthusiastic confidence in its success generously manifested by Alfred Vail, the young inventor, and his father Judge Stephen Vail, who freely contributed of his means to the experiments of Professor Morse, this great gift to the world would have been indefinitely delayed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPEEDWELL IRON WORKS,

AS REPRESENTED ON AN ANCIENT INVOICE.]

Morse was poor. He had exhausted his means by the necessary time and thought given to the development of his conception, when the value of this work was realized by these two men. It was as an artist, that Morse went first to Speedwell, on October 29, 1837, to observe the progress of his new machinery which was being prepared there at the Speedwell Iron Works belonging to Judge Vail, by Alfred Vail and his a.s.sistant, William Baxter.

Morse had accepted a commission, doubtless given him as a means of relieving his pecuniary stress, to paint the portraits of several members of Judge Vail's household. It will be remembered, that besides his great invention, Professor Morse was an artist of considerable reputation, as well as an author. In his youth, it is said, he was more strongly marked by his fondness for art than for science. He was a pupil of Was.h.i.+ngton Allston, a member of the Royal Academy, and studied with Benjamin West. He painted the portraits of many distinguished men, among them the then President of the United States, James Monroe, for the city of Charleston; and, later, Fitz Greene Halleck and Chancellor Kent, now in the Astor Library, and the full length portrait of Lafayette for the city of New York. He was one of the founders and was first President of the National Academy of Design, and it was on his return from the pursuit of his renewed study of art abroad that he met with the remarkable experience which turned his attention from art to invention and gave him his life work. In a letter written to Alfred Vail by Professor Morse, and given in Mr. Vail's book on "The American Electro-Magnetic Telegraph", (page 153), we find the following account:

"In 1826, the lectures before the New York Atheneum, of Dr. J. F. Dana, who was my particular friend, gave to me the first knowledge ever possessed of electro magnetism, and some of the properties of the electro magnet; a knowledge which I made available in 1832, as the basis of my own plan of an electro telegraph. I claim to be the original suggestor and inventor of the electric magnetic telegraph, on the 19th of October, 1832, on board the packet s.h.i.+p Sully, on my voyage from France to the United States and, consequently, the inventor of the first really _practicable telegraph on the electric principle_. The plan then conceived and drawn out in all its essential characteristics, is the one now in successful operation."

Professor Morse had more honors and medals than perhaps any American living. He belonged to a distinguished literary family. His two brothers founded _The New York Observer_ in 1823. This is now the oldest weekly in New York and the oldest religious paper in the State. As an author, he wielded the pen of a ready writer. He not only published controversial pamphlets concerning the telegraph, but contributed articles and poems to many magazines and edited the works of Lucretia Maria Davidson, accompanying them by a personal memoir. He published in 1835, a book ent.i.tled, "Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States; Imminent Dangers to the Free Inst.i.tutions of the United States through Foreign Immigration and the Present State of the Naturalization Laws, by an American". Later were published "Confessions of a French Catholic Priest, to which are added Warnings to the People of the United States, by the Same Author", (edited and published with an introduction, 1837), and "Our Liberties Defended, the Question Discussed, is the Protestant or Papal System most favorable to Civil and Religious Liberty".

Alfred Vail.

To Alfred Vail belongs a place of honor, as the author of a valuable book on "The American Electro-Magnetic Telegraph", and a place of honor, also, as having been the man to perceive, at a critical moment, the importance to the world of the great invention of Professor Morse. He was among the spectators who witnessed the first operation of the electro-magnetic telegraph at the New York University and saw then, for the first time, the apparatus. Of this occasion he writes as follows: "I was struck with the rude machine, containing, as I believed, the germ of what was destined to produce great changes in the condition and relations of mankind." Again, he says, "I rejoiced to carry out the plans of Professor Morse. I promised him a.s.sistance, provided he would admit me to a share of the invention,--to which proposition he a.s.sented. I returned to my rooms, locked my door, threw myself upon the bed and gave myself up to the reflections upon the mighty results which were certain to follow the introduction of this new agent in serving the wants of the world". With this intense conviction, young Vail communicated his enthusiasm to his father, Judge Stephen Vail, who owned the Speedwell Iron Works and who generously supplied the means by which the plans for the electric telegraph were put into successful operation. It is an interesting fact that these same Speedwell Iron Works are variously connected with the history of the country, for "here was forged the shaft of the _Savannah_, the first steams.h.i.+p that crossed the Atlantic and here were manufactured the tires, axles and cranks of the first American locomotives."

In _The Century_ for April 1888, is a most interesting article, ent.i.tled "The American Inventors of the Telegraph, with Special Reference to the Services of Alfred Vail". This is exhaustive of the subject, was written by Franklin Leonard Pope, and was supervised by Mrs. Alfred Vail, as she tells us, and the statements fortified by doc.u.ments, correspondence and designs.

To _The Century_ editors and to Mr. James c.u.mmings Vail, of Morris Plains, son of Alfred Vail, we are indebted for the use of the plate of the Speedwell Iron Works, redrawn from an ancient invoice, the age of which is not known. The ill.u.s.tration of the "Factory" in which the first successful trial and, afterwards, the first public exhibition, of the electric telegraph took place, is from a photograph of the building as it stands at the present day, on the lot in which stands the homestead house, now occupied by Mrs. Lidgerwood.

"I have always understood", says Mr. J. C. Vail, (Jan'y 5, 1893), "that the room in which my father and Baxter (his young a.s.sistant) worked and called the 'work shop', was in an old stone building within the Iron Works enclosure, between the bridge and Morristown and is still standing, and is the only stone building within that enclosure."

Of these buildings and a.s.sociations, Mrs. John H. Lidgerwood, the granddaughter of Judge Vail, now living on the place, at Speedwell, writes as follows, Dec. 12, 1892:

"My grandfather makes but three entries in his diary:

"'1838, January 6th. Dr. Gale came this morning. They (Prof. Morse, Alfred Vail, and the Dr.) have worked the Tellegraph in the Factory this evening for the first time.'

"'10th. Mr. Morse and Alfred are working and showing the Tellegraph.'

"'11th. A hundred came to see the Tellegraph work.'

"The old house", continues Mrs. Lidgerwood, "in which my grandfather then lived, still remains near the foot of the hill nearest the town. The interior has been entirely changed and I never knew the room occupied by Professor Morse.

"The shop, in which the machine was constructed, and which was called the 'work shop', has also been rebuilt. Its four walls are all that are left of the original building. The floor of that room was taken away to make a one story building and the windows were put in the roof. It is now entirely vacant and stands on the side of the dam opposite the saw mill, the gable end of the old shop facing the road. One end of the foundation was partly torn away by the freshet that destroyed the old bridge. The experiments were made in a building called 'The Factory', which is at the foot of our lawn. It was built for a Cotton Factory, but only used for making b.u.t.tons, owing, I believe, to some fault in its construction.

"My grandfather has told me frequently that the machine was placed on the first floor, and about three miles of copper wire, insulated by being wound with cotton yarn, was wound around the walls of the second story. There are some hooks still in the side walls but I do not know if they are the same.

I have still a small portion of the original wire used in the experiments.

I do not know the age of any of these buildings. The works were probably here long before the Revolution. I have heard my grandfather say there was a forge here at that time."

The machine used on the occasion to which Judge Vail refers in his diary, and on which he himself had sent the first message of all, "a patient waiter is no loser," is now loaned by the family to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute, Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C.

From the time the first telegraphic message was sent by Alfred Vail from the "Factory" at Speedwell and received by Professor Morse two miles away, and the next experiment when Morse and Vail operated with complete success through ten miles of s.p.a.ce,--to the final triumph at Was.h.i.+ngton, many and great were the perils and moments of anguish through which the inventors pa.s.sed. It was on the 24th of May, 1844, when the supreme test of the telegraph was made at Was.h.i.+ngton and the message was sent to Mr. Vail in Baltimore, in the words selected by Miss Annie G. Ellsworth and taken from Numbers xxiii: 23, "What hath G.o.d wrought."

During these years Alfred Vail, it is claimed, had "not only become a full partner in the owners.h.i.+p of the invention, but had supplied the entire resources and facilities for obtaining patents and for constructing the apparatus for exhibition at Was.h.i.+ngton; and more than this, he had introduced essential improvements not only in the mechanism, but in the fundamental principles of the telegraph." Vail felt that Morse had not acknowledged, as he expected, his (Vail's) part in the invention or fully recognized his rights of partners.h.i.+p. Of this, the Hon. Amos Kendall, the friend and a.s.sociate of both, has said: "If justice is done, the name of Alfred Vail will forever stand a.s.sociated with that of Samuel F. B. Morse in the history and introduction into public use of the electro-magnetic telegraph."

Mr. Vail's book, which has place in most of the prominent libraries of Europe and America, was published in 1845 and is ent.i.tled "The American Electro-Magnetic Telegraph with the Reports of Congress and a description of all Telegraphs known, employing Electricity or Galvinism". It is ill.u.s.trated by eighty-one wood engravings.