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OLD
MEMBERS OF THE CALHOUN AND KALAMAZOO
COUNTY BARS BY A. D. P. VAN BUREN
Judge Ransom on the bench always appeared to me like a Sir Matthew Hale, presiding over the deliberations of those crafty disciples of Littleton and Coke, then practicing at the old bar, and, like the great English jurist he would, with clear and just discrimination, trace out from the intricate course of the trial the truth of the matter at issue, and administer impartial justice to the parties in the suit.
1 remember among the important cases tried before him, the following: A case that was tried two or three times~for heavy damages to land and timber from the building of a mill dam; the noted malpractice case between Mr. Beals and Dr. N. M. Thomas, of Schoolcraft; the trial of Whiteman, of Battle Creek township, for the murder of his wife. When Whiteman received" his sentence of twenty years' imprisonment, he replied to the judge: "Very well, I shall cheat you out of half of the sentence, for I don't intend to live-but ten years. " How near he came to this calculation, I do not know, but he died in prison before his time was out.
CHARLES E. STUART
Charles E. Stuart was one of the ablest and most eloquent members of the old Kalamazoo bar, and stood in the front rank of the eminent lawyers of the state. He was born November 25, 1810, at Canaan Corners, Columbia county, N. Y. His father, some few years later, removed to Waterloo, Seneca county, X. Y., where Charles began and finished his educational course, taking his degrees in the "three R's" of the common school curriculum, with the additional attainment of: grammar. This is all he ever got from the schools. He is preeminently a self-made man. At the" age of nineteen he hung up his hat as a student in the law office of Birdsall & Clark, of Waterloo. He was admitted to the bar in Seneca, county.
Michigan
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