| "The Public Service of the
State of New York" |
HON. SANFORD E. CHURCHSANFORD ELIAS CHURCH was born in the town of Milford, Otsego county, New York, April 18, 1815. His parents, who were natives of Connecticut, were of English and Scotch descent. They removed from Otsego to Monroe county, when Mr. Church was but a child, and his education was obtained entirely in the common schools of that county and at the Monroe Academy. In 1835 he went to Albion to reside, and with the exception of a brief residence in Rochester, that village was always after his home. He pursued his legal studies with Benjamin L. Bessac, who subsequently was his law partner until 1843, when he associated himself with Noah Davis, now presiding judge of the first department of the Supreme Court, for the general practice of his profession. This firm continued for a period of thirteen years. On its dissolution the firm of Church — Sawyer was established at Albion; about 1862 Mr. Church took Judge Selden's place in the firm of Selden, Munger — Thompson, at Rochester; in 1865 the firm became Church, Munger — Cooke, and so continued until Judge Church's elevation to the bench of the Court of Appeals. In politics he was a Democrat. His first official position was a member of Assembly in 1842, from Orleans county, he being the only democratic member that year from the old eighth judicial district. Among his associates were John A. Dix, Michael Hoffman, John A. Lott, David R. Floyd Jones, Horatio Seymour, Arphaxed Loomis, Levi S. Chatfield, and Calvin T. Hurlburt. Three years later he was appointed district attorney of Orleans county, by Governor Silas Wright, and subsequently was elected by the people to that position. In 1850 he was nominated by the Democrats for Lieutenant-Governor, Horatio Seymour being the candidate for Governor. Mr. Seymour was defeated by Washington Hunt, the Whig candidate, by about two hundred majority, but Mr. Church ran ahead of his ticket and was elected. In 1852 he was re-elected to the same office, and Mr. Seymour was then elected Governor. In 1857 he was chosen Comptroller of the State, but was defeated in 1859 and 1864, when a candidate for re-election. In 1867 he was elected a member of the Constitutional Convention, and was chairman of its finance committee. At the Democratic National Convention, held in New York city, July, 1868, Mr. Church was named by the delegation from New York State as its choice for the nomination for the presidency, and his name was presented to the convention by Samuel J. Tilden, the chairman of the delegation, who cast the vote of the State for him at every ballot, until a break was made by other States, and Horatio Seymour, who was chairman of the convention, was nominated. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions of 1844, 1860, 1864 and 1868, and in the convention of 1860 advocated the nomination of Stephen A. Douglas. In the spring of 1870, when the existing Court of Appeals was to be established, Judge Church was nominated by the Democratic convention for chief judge of the court. He was not an aspirant for the office. The opposing candidate in the convention was Hon. George F. Comstock, and the opposing candidate in the election was Hon. Henry R. Selden, of Rochester, both of whom had been judges of the old court. Mr. Church was elected by nearly ninety thousand majority. He died very suddenly and unexpectedly, without any previous sickness, at his residence at Albion, on the 14th of May, 1880, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Mr. Church was a man of remarkable characteristics. He was by nature a chief among men in politics and in law. He had a large comprehension, and a splendid endowment of common sense and sagacity; the calmness, gravity and dignity of a superior nature; a candor, magnanimity and patience unusual in one who formed his opinions upon such deep reflection and held them so tenaciously. His counsel was therefore weighty, and his influence in this State throughout his life was oracular with his own party, and his opinions were heard with respect if not with acquiescence by his opponents. The above record shows that Mr. Church was for many years a conspicuous figure in the State and the Nation. In politics he was a strong and active partisans hut had little bitterness or vindictiveness in his composition, was never swayed by unworthy motives, and never stooped to unhandsome means. Undoubtedly his tastes were more inclined to statesmanship than the law or the magisterial occupation, but it is an evidence of public confidence in his merits that judicial elevation came unsought, and an evidence that he was guided by a strong sense of duty that he accepted a post comparatively secluded even if elevated, and contentedly sacrificed his preference for the halls of legislation and political debate for the quiet of the judgment seat. When Mr. Church was taken from political life and put upon the bench without previous judicial experience and without even the reputation of a learned lawyer, the feeling among many of the opposite political party was that he was placed there from partisan motives and might be controlled by party favoritism. It is but simple justice to say that this fear proved groundless, and he died high in the esteem and confidence of the entire community. He suffered from the worst infliction to which a judge can ever be subjected, namely, the constant use of his name as a contingent candidate for the presidency, but in spite of this he acquired and preserved the reputation of an honest and unprejudiced magistrate. As has been said, he was never regarded as a lawyer of great learning, but his native sagacity, his long experience and intimate knowledge of men and affairs made him a judge of the highest degree of usefulness. He never failed to hear, and probably never failed to understand, every word of every argument ever addressed to him. He was as little apt to go astray as any magistrate who ever sat on the bench. His opinions, builded on principle, are models of conciseness and weighty wisdom, and it is believed that the more they are studied the more influence they will command in all courts of justice. Mr. Church had not great enthusiasm or apparent warmth. In him the fires burned deep, and his passions and emotions were so under his control that they seldom flamed up to the surface. That one with so little personal magnetism and so much dignity and apparent reserve should so strongly have attached men to himself, is a proof of his moral excellence. He was, however, a genial and companionable gentleman, and with the dignity he had all the patience and courtesy so essential to his high post. No one who has ever argued a case in that court, especially no young man, can ever forget the attentive consideration and the patient and courteous hearing which he gave to every word that was there uttered. His kind eyes were always fixed on the speaker, and his manner encouraged the timid and inspired confidence and respect. Sometimes, indeed, the chief's patience amounted to long-suffering, but nothing ever betrayed him into a perceptible loss of composure for an instant. His belief was that it saved time to hear the lawyers out. By the younger lawyers of this State his memory is cherished with the tenderest respect. The value of such a character at the head of the highest court in a great Commonwealth cannot be over-estimated. It gives stability to the law, and gains for adjudications the respect even of those against whom they are pronounced. The chief judge was of commanding stature, robust physique, and noticeable presence. His head was massive, his countenance strong, sagacious, and benevolent. The portrait in the chamber of the court does small justice to his personal appearance. But his strong frame and untiring energy yielded at last to overwork. He died literally in the harness, the ink hardly dry on his opinion in the case of Burr v. Butt Co., 81 N. Y. 175. It is probable that he had had some apprehensions on the score of his health, after witnessing the untimely death of three of his associates, two of whom were men of physical powers equal to his own. To warnings and entreaties of friends his invariable calm reply was "There is the public business to be done, and we must do it as long as we can." And so for ten years he resolutely maintained the example that he had set for the court at the outset, and which has enabled them, alone of all the ultimate courts of the country, to keep up with their enormous business. But at what a terrible sacrifice of precious and useful life! Upon the death of the Chief, the Honorable Charles J. Folger, senior associate judge and since chief judge, read a memorial in court, from which the following are extracts: "He was not what is called a man of liberal education. What advantages the academy of his day furnished, these he had; and his acquirement there was made practical and ready to his hand by his early becoming a teacher of others in schools. He made no claim to classical taste or acquirement, or to any merely literary excellence; he claimed for himself no excellence; and it was often that he would preface the reading of an opinion with a diffident apology for what he feared was its deficiency in expression. He never apologized for the matter of it, its statement of law, the rule it declared or enforced. 'Plus habit operis quam ostentationis;' matter more than show. He was wont to say that 'a man is worth naught who has not convictions — convictions.' His conclusions were reached only after mature reflection — Melius recurrere, guam male currere — but when reached, he was clear and strong in the grounds of his judgment, and he held an opinion, once formed deliberately, with the tenacity peculiar to a strong and vigorous mind; it was strong and abiding, and impressed itself upon others. Search will be in vain in the reports or in the archives for an opinion matured and read by him, in a case that had fallen to him for his especial consideration, that did not carry the court and form its judgment. He often did not vote, because in doubt. He sometimes dissented, and expressed his dissent in writing; but it was then meant as a dissenting opinion, to put himself right in the books, and not to affect the judgment of others. Having clear ideas, and never beginning to write until his thoughts had gone to a fixed conclusion, he clearly stated what he clearly saw, in vigorous sentences, in words generally justly used, and in a style lucid and free from trick, and with force of logic. His opinions were his own, and not another's, whatever aid he may have drawn from others in preparing for them. He had that saving common sense which led him to correct conclusions, that independence of character which made him flinch not from what he deemed to he right, and combined therewith that strong sense of natural justice that caused him to shrink from what seemed to him to be a wrong, and that at times, perhaps, led him to the verge of the law in the effort to decide a case upon its particular real right. * * * His natural tendencies were not for a judicial life. He loved to be among men. He was ambitious of other preferment, honorably so. He had the right to feel capable of power. He knew that public confidence followed him and that he had never deceived it. Yet his long and serious illness had touched him, and a place upon the bench seemed one of desirable quiet, and was one of honorable usefulness. * * * But the ten years of the judicial life of Judge Church have demonstrated that he had in an eminent degree the qualities that fitted him for the duties of his place, and have fully justified the wisdom of his selection. Others who have preceded him on the bench may have had greater and more exact learning in the law. None have excelled him in that equipoise of faculty which enables a judge to fairly weigh and determine causes that come before him. He had that catholicity, so to speak, of mental constitution, and that freedom from prejudice which enabled him to hear, and having heard to decide a case, giving due weight to arguments presented and the consideration which fitly belonged to them. His prepossessions did not darken his perceptions of the reasons on the other side. He had the doubting, cautious spirit, so that he was always willing to listen to argument; and that receptive quality of mind — as a jewel cut with many facets-that caught light from whatever side it might come. It has been intimated on some hand that he much relied upon his own reflections in reaching conclusions of law; and that he had a disregard of authority. We know that this is a mistake, He was not the slave of precedent, fearing to walk in dark places without light from the wisdom of others. But he fully recognized the truth that causes are not to be decided by natural reason alone, but by the artificial reason and judgment of the law as well, as they have been shaped by the arguments from the bar, and by considerations on the bench, through the many years that lawyers have wrangled and judges have determined. * * * For now ten years he has sat at the head of this bench. Here he has been exactly in the focus of the acute and searching intellect of the bar, from which escapes undetected no weakness of the head, or infirmity of disposition. The bar knows that he has led the business of the court with a kindness of disposition, an evenness and serenity of temper, a gentleness in restraint, a nobleness of courtesy, a patience of hearing to tyro or veteran, that pleased and satisfied and so soothed all as to make even defeat seem half success. All who hear me now, know how seldom was the thread of argument snapped by interpellant words from him. It was as if he bore in mind the saying of Bacon : 'A much-speaking judge is no well-tuned cymbal.' We may be foolish in the fond belief that there is a mutual cordiality between this bench and the bar that comes before it. We are not mistaken in the belief that whatever be the degree of respect and affection felt by the profession for this court, it is due in the main to the official and personal bearing and courtesy of Chief Judge Church toward counsel, and the confidence inspired by him. But the public and the bar looked only on the dial plate. It was in the quiet and secluded intercourse of the consultation room that we saw behind it, and beheld the nice harmony of his faculties, that discrimination which was the ready touchstone to draw the useful from the needless; the wisdom of his thought; the aptness and scope of his suggestion; the strength of his control, with the gentleness of its exercise; his sound common sense, that strong solvent of our perplexities; his encouragement of the flagging; his soft repression of the rash; how in care and caution he would feign doubts, or put queries, that the case might be well shaken and thoroughly sifted; for with Chief Judge Bibb, he thought it well 'to have waited for that conscious assurance in adjudication, which is superior to every gratification that a vain reputation for intuition and rapid decision could bestow.' At times, with long intervals, when lassitude or some peccant humor of the body bore upon him, his strong convictions grew impatient of prolonged hesitation, and a hot word would fly; but the recoil hurt him worse than the missile did its object, and days of tenderness, almost caressing, would soothe to healing, and leave no scar. We only can fully know his eager, almost passionate desire to bring down the calendar of the court, so that we might be abreast with the business. It was with a feeling like despair, and with a sense of duty left undone, that he thought he saw a rising tide of business too great to cope with. It would have been a crowning joy to him could lie once have ordered the court adjourned before the end of the allotted term, for the reason that there was not a cause on the calendar ready for hearing and unheard. To this end he addressed himself 'in labors often,' until he fell 'cut like a diamond, with its own dust.'" |
 The Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York |
