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ASAHEL W. JONES

By JAMES P. WILSON, of Youngstown

Those Revolutionary New England Ancestors of ours who migrated in such numbers from Connecticut and other sea-board States to Ohio, in the early days of the Western Reserve, bred a race of virile men, many of them possessing quite characteristic traits of character and sterling qualities; men of strong physical and mental fiber. They laid the foundation broad and liberal upon which much of the polity and welfare of this state has been builded.

From such ancestral stock there sprang in direct descent Asahel W. Jones, a man very large physically and mentally strong; his grandfather came into the wilderness of Trumbull County the year that Ohio became a State. Asa was born in 1838. He was a farmer boy, and like many of the earlier lawyers and not a few of the best lawyers of the State, his apprenticeship consisted of a common school and country academy education, and a law office reading. He was called to the bar at the age of twenty-one; practiced a few years at Warren, Ohio, and then permanently located at Youngstown, in partnership in succession with Thomas W. Sanderson, Robert B. Murray and Hon. W. S. Anderson. He rapidly rose to a position among the leaders of the bar of Northern Ohio and took rank among the foremost and certainly among the most successful lawyers of the State, which he maintained until his retirement a few years before his death, which occurred on the 9th day of October, 1918, at his country mansion in Trumbull County.

This brief outline of the salient features of his life conveys but an inadequate impression of the man. During his long and active practice at the bar, he sat upon both sides of the trial table; he was a forceful and very successful advocate of individual rights against corporate interests and he was also the loyal and able counsel for Corporations. He was the counsel for The Baltimore & Ohio, and its subsidiary Companies in Eastern Ohio and Western

Pennsylvania; one of the organizers and largely interested in one of the most prosperous and flourishing banking institutions of our State; the moving spirit in the organization and the building of certain lines of railroad, but he never got away from the soil. His mind reverted to his boyhood days and he found much pleasure in the ownership and supervision of very many broad acres of farming land stocked with well bred registered cattle.

During all his legal career, Asa Jones was a diligent and what is more, a comprehending reader and student of the law. During the trial of important cases, or while preparing briefs for the higher Courts, he could be found late at night and sometimes far into the night among his books in his large and well selected library, fortifying his legal positions. He did not belong to that school of lawyers who think that they can, without much resort to the books, like the spider, continue to spin from its own entrails a complete and perfect web of legal jurisprudence. He knew that the crystallized sense and wisdom of the ages lay in the deep pockets of the law, and he knew how and where to delve for it. Like the great majority of us, he was not always right, but he was a wise practitioner of:

"That lawless science of the law,

That tangled myriad of precedent,
That wilderness of single instances,

Through which a man by wit or fortune blest,
May hope to tread a path to wealth or fame.

As Lord Tennyson viewed our profession.

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His mind was capable of discriminating, segregating, analyzing and of forming sound judgments upon what the law is. He was a keen, alert and tactful Attorney, a forceful advocate, a successful man of affairs; in short, he was a first class all-around lawyer, and it is by this title, I think, that he would most prefer to be remembered by the bar of his native state.

Mr. Jones was one of the original members of the Ohio State Bar Association and its fifth President. You will remember there came from the beginning in regular order: Rufus P. Ranney, Rufus King, R. A. Harrison, Durbin Ward and Asahel W. Jones. For twenty-five years he seldom or never was absent from our

annual meetings. He looked upon this occasion as a rendezvous for the renewal of old friendships and the making of new ones, and the cultivation of those amenities of life which sweeten the toil of an arduous profession; and he regarded these meetings as a rallying place to take counsel with the best Judicial minds of the State on matters of legislation affecting the people of the State, and upon matters relating to the welfare of the bench and bar of Ohio. Few there were among the lawyers of Ohio, and none, I think, among the members of this Association who did not know Asa W. Jones, either personally or by sight, for once to see him was to remember him, and to know him intimately was one of the pleasant associations and memories of life.

I think Mr. Jones had no inclination for the bench, nor had he any decided political ambition. He was a wide reader of literature of the better sort, closely in touch with current events, and at all times a zealous and influential aid, both State and National, to the party with which he was affiliated. In 1905 he was elected Lieutenant Governor of the State and by one of those singular and almost unbelievable mischances, if it may be so called, at a time when the nomination for the office of Governor seemed almost certain to fall to him, (if anything in politics is ever certain) much to the surprise of at least the majority of the people of this State, the nomination went to another. The reason of it lies buried in the generous heart of Asa Jones. It was an instance of self-effacement, of voluntary personal abnegation of what would be called an honor, to which Mr. Jones never afterwards alluded, but which was well known and understood by his intimates and by those of the inner circle at the time; and now that he has gone, the fact of it and the memory of it is a source of satisfaction to those who knew him intimately and is deserving of a record in any just estimate of the life and character of Honorable Asahel W. Jones.

There was another phase of his life to which I desire briefly to refer in closing. While all his life he made profession of the Methodist Episcopal faith, in middle life he seemed to be impressed with that couplet of Pope:

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.

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He began to evince a keen interest in the origin and in the evidences of the long continuity of the life of man upon earth. His study on this subject led him deeply into the literature of that special subject of research, and into a critical examination of all the more recent discoveries, and the evidences yielded from the bosom of mother earth, and all her ancient sources, of the great antiquity of man upon this continent. His knowledge of the subject was as thorough as modern scientific research could carry him, and was a source of absorbing interest to him in the quiet of the study in the declining years of his life; it reflects a side light on the mental characteristics and reflective tendencies of his mind. Upon the occasion of his seventy-ninth birthday there assembled at his fine country residence overlooking the rolling hills, the lawyers and Judges of Mahoning and Trumbull County to do him honor. There were the usual congratulatory speeches when we presented our loving cup, and we shall never forget the deep feeling which completely overcame the man, and the sincere and affectionate regard for us, many of whom had been his antagonists for half a lifetime, which he expressed in his response. He seemed to realize as to the greater number of us, we had come to the parting of the ways.

His social and domestic relations were happy in the extreme. He was a man whose memory the bench and bar of Ohio take delight in honoring.

PETER A LAUBIE

By LOUIS T. FARR, of Lisbon

Full of years, rich in experience, in the conscious realization of a useful, well-spent life, Honorable Peter A. Laubie, distinguished citizen, lawyer, soldier, jurist, on the 17th day of January, A. D. 1919, passed from the quiet, peaceful beauty of life's evening out into that day which has no morning, noon or night.

Born April 21, 1826, at Pittsburgh, Pa., he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1854, after which he began practice at Salem, Columbiana County, Ohio, from which place he volunteered when "his country called," and went out as a First Lieutenant in Company D, 19th Regiment, O. V. I.; later he was promoted to Captain of Company H, and as ranking officer served as Major of his regiment in the Atlanta campaign. He participated in a number of important battles and at the close of the war he again took up the practice of law, was elected Mayor of the city of Salem and later Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the Third, subsequently the Fourth Sub-Division of the Ninth Judicial District of Ohio, which position he filled with much credit to himself and general satisfaction to his constituents until February, 1885, when he assumed his duties as a Judge of the Circuit Court in and for the Seventh Judicial Circuit of Ohio, having previously been chosen as one of the original members of that court, and in which position he served with marked distinction until February, 1911, when he retired at the expiration of his fourth consecutive term. During his incumbency, he served most acceptably as President of this Association. On the first day of November, 1848, he was united in marriage with Jane Williams, of Allegheny City, Pa. Five children, one son and four daughters, were born of that union, all of whom survive, the wife having preceded him in death some years since.

In early life he affiliated with the Disciple or Christian Church, which relation continued until his death. Judge Laubie acquired a good English education and during the years of practice in his

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