P. Poché, whose whole record has been marked with ability, wisdom, prudence, and impartiality. A native of St. James Parish, Louisiana, of French origin, the judge graduated from Bardstown College, Kentucky, and read law in the office of ex-Governor Charles A. Wickliffe, of that State. He was admitted to the bar of Louisiana in 1859, and practised successfully until his appointment to the bench. He was a gallant Confederate soldier, and was prominent in State politics, occupying a seat in the Senate and the Constitutional Convention of 1879. In 1880 he was appointed the senior associate justice of the Supreme Court of the State for ten years, and some months ago his retention in office was urged by the people of the whole State, in testimonials never before showered on any judge in the history of the State. His great abilities, extensive and varied learning, his faculty for concise, clear, and logical reasoning, his wonderful capacity to comprehend and expound the civil law, his ready and exhaustless fund of authorities and information, his arduous and valuable services as a jurist, his uprightness and courteous demeanor, have won for him the admiration, esteem, and confidence of the bar, and certainly entitle him to reappointment.
Associate Justice Charles E. Fenner, the only son of Dr. Erasmus Fenner, was born in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1834. A graduate of the Military Institution of Kentucky at the age of seventeen years, he proceeded to the University of Virginia, where he pursued his studies for two years. A graduate of the Law Department of the University of Louisiana in 1855, he at once entered into a remunerative practice, which was terminated by the breaking out of the war. He supported Breckenridge and Lane in politics, and when Lincoln was elected and the rattle of arms began to be heard under the toga of the civilian, he assisted in forming the military battalion of the Louisiana Guards, becoming captain of one of the companies. The battalion's term of service expiring before the conscript law went into effect, Captain Fenner organized a battery which bore his name and did gallant duty. In 1866 Judge Fenner was elected a member of the first legislature under the reconstruction policy of Andrew Johnson. This was the only political office he ever held. In 1880 he was appointed on the Supreme Bench for six years, and in 1886 reappointed for twelve. Of Judge Fenner's distinguished qualifications for the high office whose functions he so well discharges, it will suffice to say that the position is one of prediction; that he has brought to it a well trained mind, broad and comprehensive in its grasp; a learning full, digested, and made accurate by great experience; that his labors are lightened and made grateful by a clear and facile style; that far above and beyond all other things, there ever rests upon him that great sense of judicial responsibility without which all the other at tributes of the mind which go to make up a judge are as crackling thorns beneath the pot.
