age of eighty-seven, in Detroit, on the 25th of August, 1887. He was a student at Union at the same time with William H. Seward, Sidney Breese, Tayler Lewis, James A. Bayard, and Bishops Doane and Potter, and he was graduated in the same class with Dr. Breckenridge in 1819. He studied law with John C. Spencer, afterwards Secretary of War and of the Treasury, and a nominee of Tyler's to the Supreme Court of the United States, though rejected by the Senate. In 1825 he came to Detroit, where his father, Dr. Daniel Goodwin, a physician, had just died. President Jackson offered him the district judgeship; but Goodwin thought the salary too small, and Wilkins took it. Jackson, however, made Goodwin district attorney. He was a member of the Constitutional Conventions of 1850 and 1867, and was president of the former. He was also in the "Frostbitten Convention " with Wilkins. He resigned from the Supreme Court in 1846, but in 1851 he was made judge of the circuit that included the Upper Peninsula, and he held that post till 1881; his portrait hangs at this day in the handsome courtroom at Sault de Ste. Marie. He lived for more than sixty years after consumption had deprived him of the use of one of his lungs. He took part in the prosecution of the famous railroad conspiracy case at Detroit in 1850, in which Governor Seward was the leading counsel for the defence.
Warner Wing followed Felch on the Supreme Bench. He was born at Marietta, Ohio, Sept. 19, 1805, his father having come from Conway, Mass. He studied, like Ransom, at the Northampton Law School, and afterward in the office of Governor Woodbridge. His public life was not very diversified; he was in both branches of the legislature when the State was young; became judge in 1846; was Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court from 1851 to 1856, and resigned that post to become counsel for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company. He and his brother Austin were both able men, and at one time and another were candidates for the United States Senate. They were neither of them politic enough to escape animosities, however, and were defeated accordingly. Warner Wing died at Monroe, March 10, 1876. It was before him that the conspiracy case was tried. This remarkable prosecution grew out of a long series of depredations upon property of the Michigan Central Railroad; trains were pelted with stones and thrown from the track by obstructions; fires were kindled along the line of the road, and finally an attempt was made to burn the depot at Niles, and the main depot at Detroit was actually burned, with a loss of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Nearly forty persons, most of whom were residents of Leoni and of Michigan Centre, — small places near where Jackson is now, — were brought to trial as for a conspiracy against the company, and a dozen of them were convicted and sent to the State's prison for terms of from five to ten years. Governor Seward's theory seemed to be that so far as most of these people were concerned in these malicious injuries, their motive was to be revenged for the occasional killing of their stock by trains, and for what seemed to them the ruthless taking of their property by the railroad company in crossing their farms. John Van Arman, afterward a leading criminal lawyer in Chicago, took part in the prosecution, not only as counsel but as detective and witness. He had disguised himself, and mingled among the conspirators to learn their purposes.
George Miles succeeded Goodwin at fifty seven, and died three or four years later. His parents were New Englanders, but he was born at Amsterdam, N. Y., April 5, 1789. Though self-educated and late in coming to the bar, for he was not admitted until he was thirty-three years old, he became conspicuous, and was district-attorney for Alleghany County, N. Y., before he came to Michigan in 1837. His opinions are said to have strongly resembled those in the early New York reports for ability, con-
