were both born in Millersburg, Elkhart County, of a solid German family, and were widely known as teachers in that part of the county before they commenced the practice of the law. B. F. Deahl was at one time also superintendent of the Nappanee schools. They are graduates of the law school of the University of Michigan, Anthony in 1889 and Benjamin F., in 1896, and in the latter year the partnership was formed. Benjamin F. Deahl was mayor of Goshen, from 1898 to 1902, serving out the unexpired term of J. H. Heatwole and the regular term beginning September, 1898. During that period he was quite active in the work of the Indiana Municipal League. They have both been active in public enterprises outside their profession, the senior member being for a number of years president of the Goshen Commercial Exchange, and prominent in the various public works promoted by that organization. He has also served as special judge in numerous cases, and is generally acknowledged to be in line for the honors of the bench. In 1816 Governor Ralston offered Anthony a position on the board of public utilities of the state, but the offer was not accepted. E. A. DAUSMAN E. A. Dausman is another active practitioner at the bar, of middle age; a native of the county, born on his father's farm, two miles east of Elkhart. Like so many other lawyers he taught school in his early manhood, and while thus engaged at Nappanee commenced his professional studies in the office of Daniel Zook, who subsequently abandoned the profession in favor of a business and industrial career. In October, 1884, Mr. Dausman was admitted to the bar and, when Mr. Zook was elected county clerk in 1886 succeeded to the latter's practice at Nappanee. In 1892 Mr. Dausman moved to Goshen, was elected to the State Senate in 1900, and has been prominent as a lawyer and a public man. ELKHART SOLDIERS AND LAWYERS The City of Elkhart is represented by a number of good lawyers who have also been brave soldiers. In that class are Capt. Orville T. Chamberlain, of the Seventy-fourth Indiana Infantry during the Civil war, and who since has served the public as town clerk, city attorney and district attorney. James S. Dodge, in his youth a Union cavalryman and later in life a graduate and a practitioner both in medicine and the law, and Collins Blake, in his nineteenth year, of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry, since 1882 a resident of Elkhart, a lawyer since 1898 and for years a justice of the peace and city judge. VETERAN GEORGE T. BARNEY Elkhart also has the distinction of holding the record in the continuous length of practice attained by any member of the bar in the county. The late George T. Barney, Mexican war veteran, pioneer of the Lake Superior region and prominent in the public affairs of Elkhart, is the gentleman to whom reference is made. His grandfather was an Irishman; his father a native of New York, and an iron worker by trade who located in Ohio in 1833. George T., then twelve years of age, was only one of nine children. His first money-making job was to carry the mail between Elyria and Oberlin, Lorain County, Ohio, when both of those towns were young. About two years afterward he commenced to learn the carpenter's trade and was thus engaged in Ohio and Michigan, when he enlisted for the Mexican war and saw eighteen months of hard and sobering service. In 1848 he located at Kalamazoo, Michigan, married there and several years afterward went to Marquette, in the Upper Peninsula. In that region, then almost unsettled wilds, he got into public office, being twice elected sheriff and receiving the gubernatorial appointment of Government timber agent. He was constable, justice of the peace, enumerator of the Chippewa Indians, and what not? At the outbreak of the Civil war he tried to enter the service, but was rejected on account of disability. Mr. Barney came to Elkhart in 1866, having previously studied law, and been admitted to practice before the Michigan Bar in 1861. During the first two years of his residence in the city he engaged in business, as well as professional work, and always dabbled more or less in fire and life insurance. In fact, Mr. Barney was what one might call a thrifty man. As he became a Mason in 1850, there were few of that fraternity in the state who outranked him in length of service. He was identified with numerous other orders. At the time of his death he was one of the very few Mexican war veterans. As early as 1867 he was active in the formation of the Indiana Mexican War Veterans and was several times elected to the presidency of the organization. His public offices included a seat in the Indiana General Assembly, to which he was elected in 1874; four years as clerk of the Elkhart City Court, commencing with 1878, and membership on the Elkhart School Board in 1900-03. JUDGE JOSEPH D. ARNOLD Joseph D. Arnold, who practiced his profession at Goshen and Elkhart for many years, was elected city judge of the latter municipality in 1892 and occupied that bench for some time. His father, A. B. Arnold, was an early settler of York Township, where Joseph D. was born in 1836. The younger man was deputy county clerk before he commenced to read law with John H. Baker, the Goshen lawyer and judge, and was admitted to practice in 1863. With the exception of a few years spent in farming at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, he gave his entire attention to the practice of his profession and his duties in connection with the judgeship. From 1868 to 1870 he served as prosecuting attorney for the district comprising the counties of Elkhart, St. Joseph, Laporte and Marshall, and after 1879 was a continuous resident of Elkhart. Judge Arnold married a daughter of N. F. Brodrick, a settler of 1835 and a well known merchant and justice of the peace. WILLIAM B. HILE William B. Hile has been a resident of Elkhart since 1889 and was with the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern for several years while he was studying law. He finally graduated from the law. department of the University of Michigan in 1898, formed a partnership with E. A. Baker, who had been his roommate in college, and has been twice honored by the republicans by election to the office of prosecuting attorney for the Thirty-fourth Judicial District. His first term commenced in 1900 and his second in 1902. LOUIS A. DEnnert Louis A. Dennert, county clerk from 1898 to 1902, is a lawyer in good standing at Elkhart, of which city he has been a resident since 1893. He was born at Adrian, Michigan, whence his father moved to Elkhart when the son was about two years of age. August F. Dennert, the father, was in the employ of the Lake Shore Railroad for nearly half a century. The son received his early education in the public schools of Elkhart, graduated in law from the University of Michigan in 1890, spent several years in Richmond, Ohio, and in Chicago, and in 1893 returned to Elkhart for practice. Excepting his service as county clerk he has been actively engaged in professional work, in combination with real estate transactions. He was for a number of terms secretary of the Elkhart County Bar Association. YOUNGER LAWYERS OF PROMISE Among the still younger, but promising members of the bar of Elkhart County may be mentioned William H. Charnley, Oscar Jay and Harlan A. Stauffer. THE ELKHART COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION Although nearly all the active members of the bar are members of the Elkhart County Bar Association, it has no regular times of meeting, and is called together seldom. When a brother dies a meeting is always called to pass suitable resolutions; and that is about all its stated function. CHAPTER VIII TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION EARLY ROADS FROM THE WABASH VALLEY-THE FORT WAYNE- In the way of transportation and communication Elkhart County has mainly depended on land-ways. Of course, there was an early period when flat boats and arks plied both the St. Joseph and the Elkhart rivers, but as the latter stream was not navigable for steamboats only the extreme northern sections of the county received the full benefit of the water craft. The finality of the matter was that because there was a general demand for adequate means of moving the products and the people from the greater territory of the county to and from their destination, the railroads came early, which quickly solved the problem for the county as a whole. Another result of this early predisposition to cultivate the soil, even in the matter of providing means of transportation and com 154 |