Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1910-09-23
IN PIONEER COURTS
HOW JUSTICE WAS ADMINISTERED
IN RUDE SURROUNDINGS.
Jurists in Early Days Frequently Were
lIIiterate, But Made Up in Hon.
esty What They Lacked in
Legal Lore.

In the days of which | write the jul
dicial system, like the country, was in
it's infancy. The circuit court was COM
posed of a president judge, elected by
the legislature, and who presided at
all the courts in the circuit, and two
associate judges. elected in each coun.
ty by the people. The president judge
was always a lawyer Of some expert
ence. The associate judges were not
lawyers and they made no claims &c
legal knowledge. AS rule they were
typical representatives of the back
woodsmen and very ilIiterate, yet they
had the power to override the pre-
siding judge and give the opinion OF
the court, and they often did so. In
such instances their reasoning was
likely to be of most ludicrous char
acter. However, they made up IN
honesty what they lacked in other d.
rections, and the results were not as
bad as might be imagined. They were
usually elected because OF their popu-
larity and their we'll known integrity,
and though they occasionally went
wrong their constituents did not
strongly censure them because of their
mistakes.
The clerks of the pioneer courts
were seldom qualified for their duties,
and many old time records are the
living proofs of this statement. They
were uneducated, and some of them
barely had the ability to scrawl their
own names, yet they did not lack ma
tive shrewdness. There was a clerk
in one of the pioneer settlements Of
central Indiana who boosted of his
superior qualifications by declaring
that he had been sued on every Sec
ton of the statute, and therefore knew
the law, while his opponent had never
been sued and therefore could not
know the law. He was elected on this
platform.
The sheriffS were chosen by the peo-
pie, and the man who could send his
voice farthest in the woods from the
courthouse door was often the success
full candidate. A stentOrian voice,
physical strength and tried courage
were the principal qualifications for
this important office. When the court
desired the presence of John Smith as
a petit juror or as a witness, 1t was
the sheriff's duty to stand outside the
courthouse or poke his head out OF
window and cry three times and with
all the power of his lungs, John
Smith, come to COURT" and John gen.
orally heard the call and obeyed. If
he happened to be so remote that he
did not hear, there were always plenty
of lOiterers who esteemed it an honor
to go after him. A written summons
was seldom resorted to. 1t was re-
garded as waste of material and
time, to say nothing Of the stupendous
task which the preparation of such
document would place upon a clerk
who could hold a pillow handle or rifle
much more effectively than a pen.
By far the most important men who
attended the sessions Of the courts
were the lawyers, especially the
younger ones. But nobody called them
lawyers. They were squires. To see
a young squire with a queu three feet
long dangling down his back and tied
with an eel skin, strutting backward
and forward over the rough-hewn
slabs that formed the floor of the or
binary log courthouse, brought the
woodsmen from near and far; and to
hear him plead" was worth wearf-
some foot journey over ice and snow
and across swollen rivers and creeks,
through an interminable forest.-Case
and Comment.