WILLIAM RUFUS DAY
WILLIAM RUFUS DAY, jurist, diplomat, statesman, has made for himself a very interesting record. Son of Judge Luther Day, grandson of Judge Rufus Paine Spalding, who was also one of Ohio’s representatives in the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth and fortieth Congresses, and great-grandson of Judge Zephaniah Swift, Chief Justice of Connecticut, and author of “Swift’s Digest,” he may be said to have come of a judicial line, and to have received by direct inheritance the qualities which have marked his career.
His mother was Emily (Spalding) Day, and he was born at Ravenna, Ohio, April 17, 1849. After preparatory studies at home, he took a collegiate course in the University of Michigan, and was graduated B.S. in 1870. He then read law in the office of Judge Robinson, of Ravenna, attended lectures in the law department of the university, meanwhile acting as librarian of that department, was admitted to the bar in 1872, and immediately established himself for the practice of his profession at Canton, Ohio, in association with William A. and Austin Lynch, a firm which later included also David B. Day. In 1875 he was married to Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Louis Schaefer, of Canton, Ohio, and is the father of four sons, William, Luther, Rufus, and Stephen. In 1886 he became judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the ninth judicial district, and in 1889 was appointed by President Harrison and confirmed by the senate as United States Judge for Northern Ohio, but was constrained by the condition of his health to decline the appointment.
Being fond of the law, he was reluctant to leave it even temporarily; but in February, 1897, he accepted the call of President McKinley to look into the mixed state of affairs in Cuba, and was on his way through Washington, when, because of the non-confirmation of Bellamy Storer as assistant secretary of state, he was appointed to that position, which proved to be one of unexpected and very great responsibility on account of the failing health of John Sherman, then head of the department. The coming on of the
