Henry Billings Brown.
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HENRY BILLINGS BROWN. AMONG the elders of the Detroit Bar, one of the most active is Mr. Edward C. Walker, a Yale graduate of 1842. It has been his lot, in the course of his long prac tice, to have a good many young men in his office: the writer hereof was one. Some thirty years ago, or more, Mr. James F. Joy, who now, at the age of eighty, is about as busy as he then was at fifty, and who a lit tle later was urged by his Michigan friends for that post in the Supreme Court of the United States which President Lincoln gave to Noah Swayne, came into Mr. Walker's of fice one day, after a prolonged absence from town, and, among other things, asked, in his brusque way, whether they had had any new students there that amounted to anything. '. Why, yes," he was told, " there have been two or three : there 's Alfred Russell; there 's Ashley Pond; and there 's Charles A. Kent." There was also in the same of fice, at about the same time, one Henry Brown. The whirligig of time has made many revolutions since, and Brown has now become a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The promising trio that were named to Mr. Joy have also made their mark, and as lawyers have been not less con spicuous than their fellow-graduate from Mr. Walker's office. Russell, a polished scholar, was one of his competitors for the late ap pointment, and as a college friend of Secre tary Proctor at Dartmouth, was supposed to have a little the better chance; Pond has long been general counsel for the Vanderbilt roads; Kent has been "eminent counsel" generally, and of like rank with the rest, lhis grouping of names in this connection is interesting by reason of the high standing of the owners, and of an occasional clashing, combination, or similitude in their personal interests. Henry B. Brown was the son of a well-todo merchant and manufacturer in Massachu setts, and was born at Lee in that State, on
the 2d of March, 1836. Twenty years later he was graduated from Yale in the same class with his present colleague Brewer, and with Magruder of the Supreme Court of Ill inois, and Chauncey Depew. Then he spent a year in Europe, and on his return studied law for a year at Yale and a few weeks at Harvard, but took no degree at either school. Going to Detroit in 1859, ne continued his law studies in the office of Walker & Rus sell, and began his official life in the post of a United States deputy marshal.' From that comparatively humble station he was trans lated to the comparatively honorable one of assistant United States district attorney, his principal being the same Alfred Russell who has now been his unsuccessful rival. In these positions he got an acquaintance among ves sel-men, and a familiarity with admiralty prac tice that was the foundation of his subsequent fortunes; for after his next promotion, which was his appointment by Governor Crapo as judge of the Wayne Circuit Court, — a place that helield for barely five months, — he went into business as junior in the strong admi ralty firm of Newberry, Pond & Brown, his partner Mr. Pond being the gentleman of that name heretofore referred to. The senior partner, Mr. Newberry, had once tried his hand at the publication of a volume of Admiralty Reports, made up of cases se lected from various quarters and decided between 1842 and 1857. Mr. Brown pro duced another volume on this plan that con tained cases decided between 1857 and 1875. Upon the sudden death in 1875 of John W. Longyear, who had been district judge since Ross Wilkins resigned in 1869, Presi dent Grant made Brown his successor, and he has held the office ever since. Within two or three years past he has also lectured upon Admiralty Law at the University of Michigan, where both Pond and Kent had previously been in the law faculty, — the lat ter, indeed, for twenty years. In 1887 the
