Judge Halmor Emmons Built a Country Home in "Swampy Ecorse"
Camping on Emmons Boulevard - 1918
by Kathy Warnes
“I determined to seek a standing at the bar first, to do my whole duty to my clients, and never seek without the profession the slightest advancement. If collateral success of reputation came, I determined it should be accidental or when I had faithfully tried my utmost efforts at the bar.”
-Halmor Emmons from Portraits of eminent Americans now living with biographical and historic memoirs of their lives and actions – John Livingston New York, 1853, vol. 2 –
Emmons Boulevard lies in Wyandotte, across the Jefferson Avenue Bridge that divides Ecorse and Wyandotte, a bridge that spans the meeting of the Detroit and Ecorse Rivers. The life of Judge Halmor Hull Emmons bridges the pioneer days of legal and social history in Detroit and Ecorse. He gave his name to the farm stretching back from the banks of the Ecorse River (Creek) that he bought despite the puzzled questions of his Detroit contemporaries in the 1840s wondering why he wanted to locate at Ecorse and spend so much money on “that swamp of a place.”
His name on part of the land he bought is just part of the considerable legacy Halmor Emmons left to Michigan. He practiced law in Detroit from 1838 to 1870, carving a niche for himself in maritime and railroad cases. In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him a Justice of the Sixth District Court in Michigan, and he served until his death on May 14, 1877. During the Civil War, he acted as an agent for the Union government. Despite all of his accomplishments, Halmor Emmons remained true to himself and his family and a likeable Nineteenth century human being.
Halmor Emmons Prepared for a Career in Law
Friend Palmer, in his Early Days in Detroit, observed that his friend Judge Halmor Emmons planted many evergreens and other trees and flowering shrubs on his newly acquired farm. He noted that Judge Emmons made a striking picture riding the River Road when he held court, “with his saddlebags behind him going to and from his farm in Ecorse.”
Halmor Emmons had an excellent reason to buy a 622 acre farm on the banks of the Ecorse River where “the bullfrogs sang.” His poor health had been a nagging background accompaniment to his ambition since his younger days as a lawyer in Cleveland. Years later in Detroit, one of his doctors had advised him, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, to move to a place where he could catch malaria instead of consumption! Another doctor told him to move to Northern Michigan and “live among the pines.” Halmor Emmons listened to his doctors and then he consulted a Wyandotte medicine man who took him to view the land at the point where the Ecorse River meets the Detroit River. Mineral deposits abounded and the Wyandotte Native Americans considered it a healing ground.
The rural charm and quiet of the village of Ecorse at the junction of the Detroit and Ecorse Rivers eight miles away from the clatter and bustle of nineteenth century Detroit soothed Halmor’s city and law practice jangled nerves. Halmor Emmons built a house on the banks of Ecorse River and his biographers said that he traveled there every summer to live “amongst the reeds and the bull frogs.”
Biographies like The Early Bench and Bar in Detroit from 1805 to the end of 1850 by Robert Bud Ross, described Halmor as standing about 5’8” tall with a spare frame. He had a dark complexion, piercing eyes, straight black hair and he wore a full beard and no mustache, the style of his day. The biographies noted that Halmor had a “feeble constitution.”
The years before Halmor had moved to Detroit had been as busy as the growing city itself. When he arrived in Detroit in 1838, Halmor Emmons was still an attorney who had reluctantly left Cleveland to join his father in his Detroit law practice. Born in the small town of Sandy Hill in upstate New York on November 22, 1814, Halmor was the son of newspaperman Adonijah Emmons. As a boy Halmor Emmons developed a love of books that would stay with him for the rest of his life, and when the family moved further west to Keesville, New York, he made an educational arrangement with his father. Halmor attended school three days a week and the other three days he worked for his father’s newspaper. He set type for the paper, worked to advertise it and build up its circulation and delivered it to subscribers. Although Halmor only attended school three days, he earned good grades and his biography noted that Halmor learned most of his Latin grammar while riding his horse back and forth to school or on newspaper business.
As a young man working as a store clerk, Halmor Emmons gave his employer complete satisfaction and also kept up with his studies. Rising at five o’clock every morning, he would fulfill his clerking duties and after that he would study his books every evening until bedtime. Two of his friends from that period of his life, James Cronkhite, who studied literature and John H. Martindale, a talented young lawyer, influenced Halmor so profoundly with their ambition and professional aspirations that he decided to become a lawyer instead of a clerk or an accountant.
In 1837, soon after Halmor Emmons passed the bar, Nicholas Hill, Esq. of Saratoga Springs, New York, offered him a partnership. Halmor was dazzled that the author of Cowan and Hill’s notes wanted him as a partner, but with the backing of his family, Halmor Emmons read law and worked at the firm of Stowe & Stetson in Keesville, in northern New York. Lawyers Stowe and Stetson were not inclined to be hands-on mentors, instead, they gave Halmor the requisite four volumes of Blackstone to study.
Dutifully, Halmor read Blackstone and made notes, but then he rebelled, arguing that Blackstone was dry and uninteresting. Instead, against all precedent and advice, he read lawyers that he considered relevant and interesting, including Chitty’s Contracts, Cowan’s Justice Court Treatise, and Phelp’s Evidences. Halmor thoroughly studied and understood the law books and made notes about the points of law he learned from them. In his two years with Stowe & Stetson, he rapidly mastered the elementary principles of the law, and quickly gained recognition for his ability to prepare briefs.
After his two year stay in Keesville, Halmor moved to Essex, New York, where he spent two years in the law office of Honorable Henry H. Ross. After two years with Judge Ross, Halmor considered the effect on his fragile health of long strenuous hours of study and research it would take to keep up with the lawyers in Albany and other populous New York cities and decided that he would make a move West.
Halmor Emmons Practiced Law in Detroit
Like many others before him, Halmor Emmons thought that the legal work in the West – as Ohio and Michigan were then considered – would be less strenuous, so he decided to move to Cleveland, Ohio and set up practice there. Halmor had also established a connection with one of the prominent lawyers in Cleveland and began to build a promising legal practice when his father asked him to come to Detroit to join the family law firm, A. Emmons & Sons.
It seems that lawyering dominated the Emmons family. Jed Philo Clark Emmons, Halmor’s younger brother, completed his law studies and moved to Detroit in 1836. After Jed established himself as a lawyer, his father Adonijah Emmons who had passed the New York Bar exam years earlier, abandoned his newspaper and moved to Detroit to join his son’s law practice. In 1838, Adonijah and Jed invited Halmor to join them in their Detroit law practice, and in 1838, Halmor moved to Detroit and the father and two sons practiced law as the firm of A. Emmons & Sons.
Halmor Emmons – Marine Lawyer
Detroit’s location on the Detroit River which linked the upper and lower Great Lakes made it an important shipping artery and soon Halmor Emmons turned his attention to marine law. In November 1841, A. Emmons & Sons tried the Fitch & Newberry & Goodell case., deciding the rights to a consignment of goods shipped to Detroit on the schooner Lafayette..Another of Halmor Emmons’ early marine law cases, Hale and Hale vs. the ship Milwaukie in 1844, involved a cargo of wheat that the Hales shipped on the Milwaukie that didn’t arrive in port.
Over three decades later in 1873, Halmor Emmons still tried marine cases, including the famous Dove and Mayflower collision in the St. Clair River. The Buffalo Commercial Advertiser reported on March 26, 1873, that Judge Emmons of the U.S. Circuit at Detroit had upheld the decision of Judge Longyear of the District Court, that the Mayflower was at fault. Judge Emmons found a judgment against the Mayflower for several thousand dollars in damages.
A few days later The Cleveland Herald of March 28. 1873, reported that Judge Emmons had reversed Judge Longyear’s decision in the case of John Demass vs. the brig C.P. Williams. Judge Longyear had ruled in the District Court that a case brought by John Demass, owner of the tug General Grant against the Williams couldn’t be sustained because there was no lien against her.
John Demass appealed the case to the Circuit Court, and Judge Emmons reversed the decision and ordered a decree to be entered in favor of Demass for the entire amount claimed. Judge Emmons said that the time charged for was consumed whether the tug actually hauled the vessel off or not, and the lien existed irrespective of the question whether the tug was actually attached to the vessel or not. Halmor Emmons argued maritime cases during the January 1849 Michigan Supreme Court, including Robinson vs. the Steam Boat Red Jacket and Lawson et al. vs. Higgins et al concerning the building, fitting, and furnishing of a vessel,
Halmor Emmons, Railroad Lawyer
The Western railroads developed at pace with the career of Halmor Emmons, and he quickly saw the opportunity to establish a new and profitable branch of his law practice. Eventually, most of the railroad lines going through Detroit hired Halmor Emmons to be their counsel-in-chief, including the Grand Trunk, Great Western, Detroit & Milwaukee and Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroads. He became known as one of the leading railroad lawyers of his day.
Often, Halmor Emmons allowed his benevolent disposition to overcome his courtroom manner. One Detroit winter, rains had made the roads into the city impassable and the price of wood escalated from $1.75 to $6.00 a cord. One morning Halmor realized that if the poor people of Detroit didn’t acquire some wood, they would freeze. Walking along the street, Halmor asked the first man he came to, “Are you around notifying?”
“Notifying what?” the man asked.
“The meeting in the United States court room to immediately procure fuel for the poor. It takes place at nine o’clock.”
“I had not heard of it, but will do what I can,” the man said.
“Very well, tell everybody you see to come,” said lawyer Emmons.
He stopped other people on the street to tell them the same news, and in ninety minutes the court room overflowed with people. People subscribed thousands of dollars and in an hour or two the immense wood piles of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad were distributed to the poor people who needed wood. The daily papers published the story with great fanfare, but at his request, they didn’t publish the name of Halmor Emmons.
In his role as leading counsel for the Great Western Railroad in its case against the Commercial Bank of Canada, Halmor Emmons traveled to London to meet the president, directors, and leading lawyers of the Great Western Railroad to plan their legal strategy. During the meeting he revealed an encyclopedic knowledge of English railroad law that astonished his colleagues.
After one of the meetings, the railroad president asked Halmor to repeat his presentation so that a stenographer could record it. The railroad president noted that the group had been discussing common law, equity and railroad law, and asked Halmor what he considered to be his specialty. Halmor replied that he knew something about common law, equity, and railroad law, but he considered admiralty law to be his specialty.
Halmor Emmons, Temperance Advocate
Halmor Emmons worked to keep his law practice and his personal life separate, but one case pushed that resolve to the breaking point. Halmor Emmons believed firmly and wholeheartedly in temperance, and he started a small temperance group in Detroit that soon grew into a larger organization.
One of the 1840s cases that Halmor Emmons tried involved the Reverend Dr. Duffield, a learned, and widely known Presbyterian minister lecturing in Detroit. In his lectures Dr. Duffield harshly criticized the Catholic Church and the Irish for what he perceived to be their zealous love of spirits and lack of enthusiasm for the Temperance cause. The lectures created much excitement in Detroit, because at the time many Irish Catholic immigrants had settled there.
Alarmed at Dr. Duffield’s inflammatory words against the Irish, the Reverend Catholic Bishop of the Diocese, perhaps Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere, and several learned priests called a counter meeting to denounce who they considered the Presbyterian rabble rouser and bigot. Heated rhetoric abounded and the atmosphere between the two factions grew tense as the evening progressed. Then Halmor Emmons decided to intervene. Calmly he stood up and he defended Reverend Duffield’s right to preach against Catholicism, the Irish, repeal, temperance, and the welfare, temporal or eternal, of his fellow citizens.
Halmor Emmons argued persuasively enough to convince both sides of the controversy to adopt a resolution affirming the respect everyone felt for Dr. Duffield and acknowledging his human right to be mistaken in some of his facts. The young lawyer’s argument resonated even more powerfully when people learned that he was not a particularly religious person. The case earned Halmor Emons local and statewide recognition.
Halmor Emmons was a consistent and dedicated temperance advocate and worked tirelessly for the cause for most of his life.
Halmor Emmons, Abolitionist
In 1843, Adam and Sarah Crosswhite and their four children, of Carroll County, Kentucky, discovered that their owner, Francis Giltner, intended to break up their family by offering some of them for sale. Traveling the Underground Railroad, the Crosswhites fled north and settled in the Calhoun County, Michigan village of Marshall. Marshall, Michigan, boosted a population of about 700 people, including at least 50 escaped slaves and free black families. Soon the Crosswhites had settled in and were comfortable to the extent that they sent their children to the racially integrated school and eventually had another child.
The Crosswhites enjoyed four years of freedom and then in January 1847, four slave catchers from Kentucky arrived in Marshall. Francis Troutman, a nephew of Francis Giltner, the Crosswhite’s owner, verified the identities of the Crosswhites by hiring a deputy sheriff to visit them disguised as a census taker.
In late January 1847, a slave catching posse came to the Crosswhites’ house. Francis Troutman, David Giltner, son of Francis Giltner, and two other Kentuckians tried to arrest the Crosswhites. Accounts vary as to how the neighbors were alerted, but they were alerted and soon a crowd of about 200-300 black and white Marshall residents surrounded the Crosswhite house.
Eventually, banker Charles Gorham and several other prominent Marshall citizens arrived, and after some consultation, banker Gorham introduced a resolution declaring that the the Crosswhites wouldn’t be captured and sent back into slavery. The townspeople backed them up and Francis Troutman and the other slave catchers were arrested for assault, battery, and housebreaking. They stood trial as the Crosswhites escaped to Canada over the Underground Railroad. The slave catchers returned to Kentucky, where their case galvanized the pro slavery forces and increased the animosity between the North and South.
The slave catchers returned to Michigan in December 1847 to bring a civil suit in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Michigan for $2,752, the supposed slavery value of the Crosswhite family. Abner Pratt, a future judge of the Michigan Supreme Court and John Norvell, a United States Attorney for Michigan, represented Giltner who sued twelve Marshall residents. The number sued eventually shrank to seven Marshall residents, three white men who led the meeting outside the Crosswhite home – Charles T. Gorham, Dr. Oliver Cromwell Comstock, Jr. and Jarvis Hurd, and four black men who stopped the raiders from leaving before reinforcements arrived, Charles Bergen, Planter Morse, James Smith, and William Parker.
The defendants retained Halmor H. Emmons, a future U.S. Circuit Judge, as lead attorney, Calhoun County Prosecutor Hovey K. Clarke and prominent Detroit attorneys Theodore Romeyn, James F. Joy, and Henry H. Wells. On June 1, 1848, the trial began at the U.S. Courthouse in Detroit, on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Griswold Street. United States Supreme Court Justice John McLean, sitting as a judge of the Circuit Court, presided. The jury didn’t reach a unanimous verdict and the case was discharged.
At the second trial held in November 1848, the jury awarded Frank Giltner $1,926 in damages plus costs, relying on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 as a rationale for the judgment. The verdict paved the way for more slave catchers to attempt to recapture fugitive slaves living in Michigan as well as the entire United States. Halmor Emmons continued to act individually and as an attorney to aid the cause of fugitive slaves in Detroit.
Halmor Emmons and the Portraits of Eminent Americans Biography
In 1853, John Livingston published a book called Portraits of Eminent Americans Now Living with biographical and Historic Memoirs of Their Lives and Actions, New York, 1853, and it included a sketch of Halmor Emmons, among those of many other prominent Americans of the time. Reading the sketch of Emmons and comparing it with other sketches is an exercise in wading through overblown, flowery Nineteenth Century writing to find meaning. Although the work is supposed to be autobiographies that all of the people involved paid to have included in the book, it is difficult to see how Judge Emmons could have written the meandering, ambiguous synopsis of court cases that make up most of his so called biography. There are small nuggets of biographical information included, but they are few and far in between. The Halmor Emmons biography extends 34 pages, the longest in the collection, but most of it concerns what author John Livingston considers his notable court cases.
Portraits of Eminent Americans provoked much unfavorable comment among elder members of the Detroit Bar, and when the criticism reached the ears of Halmor Emmons, he decided to act. He made it his business to either personally or by proxy visit everyone he knew who owned the book and he bought it at any price the owner asked. There is no record of how many books he bought back, out of honest embarrassment at the fawning tone of the biography, but he probably paid a hefty figure for his embarrassment.
Halmour Emmons - Excitable, Emotional, Impulsive Outside of Court
An anecdote about Halmour Emmons illustrates his out of the courtroom personality. For years, Halmor Emmons occupied an office in the old Rotunda Building in Detroit on Griswold Street. The Rotunda featured a large open space in the center with offices and galleries on each floor, arranged so closely together that people could talk to each other from their doorways. Many of Detroit’s leading lawyers including William Grey, Theodore Romeyn, Ashley Pond, and John S. Newberry, occupied offices in the Rotunda along with Halmor Emmons. One day while he sat in his office, Halmor read an article in an agricultural paper stating that gas tar was a certain remedy for bugs and insects on fruit trees.
The article engaged his full attention and set his heart racing, because these same bugs infested his vast orchard in Ecorse. He decided to try the gas tar at once! He jumped into a buggy and went to the Detroit gas works where he bought several barrels of tar and sent them immediately to his home and orchards in Ecorse. By the next day, he had hired a dozen French workers to apply the coal tar to his trees.
The next week Halmor sat in his office reading the next issue of the same paper, and he noticed a paragraph that made him sit up straight and swear. He read an apology for an earlier misprint that said that by mistake the writer had recommended gas tar instead of pine tree tar to use on the insects. Gas tar was poisonous to vegetable life and would certainly kill young fruit trees.
The lawyers with offices near Halmor Emmons rushed to their doors to listen to him curse the agricultural paper “with a fiery vehemence that resounded through the building, at the same time tearing the paper to shreds, gesticulating like maniac, howling like a lion and swearing at intervals that he would sue the condemned paper.”
William Grey asked, “What on earth is the matter?”
Theodore Romeyn said reassuringly, “Oh, it’s only Hal Emmons giving somebody a piece of his mind.”
This week, Halmor Emmons moved just as quickly as he had last week. By night time, the same group of French workers was seen scraping the gas tar from his trees.
Halmor and Sarah Emmons
Outside of his law office, Halmor Emmons is said to have preferred simple manners and tastes, been most affectionate toward his family, and never allowing professional opposition or rivalry to interfere with his social life.
Reverend Dr. Boues married Halmor Emmons and Miss Sarah Williams in Batavia, New York and according to the Portraits of Eminent Americans biography that embarrassed Halmor so much, she was one of the most beautiful and intelligent women in both New York and Michigan. The 1850 census revealed that the Emmons family lived in Hamtramck. By 1860, the Emmons family was living in Ecorse, at least part of the time and they had four children, Clara, Elizabeth, Sarah and Halmor, Jr.
Although Halmor wasn’t a professing Christian, Sarah Emmons was a devout Christian. She believed in the effectiveness of family prayer and conducted family worship with her children in her own bedroom every day. She felt strongly that grace should be said at the table and setting aside her shyness, she decided to ask the blessing at each meal and created a time table when she would begin. The first evening of her grace timetable, Halmor Emmons brought Chief Justice Field and Governor Alpheus Felch to dinner. Later recalling the occasion, Sarah Emmons said, “I felt as if my heart would fly out of my mouth, but I asked the blessing, and I never again felt the least timid. God’s grace was all sufficient.”
Halmor Emmons, Law and Politics
Clients and colleagues alike recognized Halmor Emmons as a young man of great legal ability and predicted that he would be an extremely successful lawyer. When Adonijah Emmons died in 1843, the family legal practice dissolved and Halmor Emmons formed a partnership with fellow Detroiter James Van Dyke.
According to The Early Bench and Bar of Detroit, fellow attorney Levi Bishop remembered Halmor Emmons as a man of legal ability and compassionate action.
If Halmor saw a poor, friendless boy struggling to survive, he would mentor him and lead him toward achieving his potential. He had many apprentices in his law office and he taught each of them the law with the method he had learned himself, instructing them to thoroughly read and understand each book, make notes about the books, and study them and think about the principles of law. Halmor Emmons followed this method for all of his legal cases, even after he became a judge.
Halmor Emmons displayed this same generosity of spirit in handling his law library, one of the largest in the west. He loaned his books to students and young lawyers without charge. He filled his extensive case of briefs with slips, marking their loan to various professional friends and he handed out arguments that had required elaborate, time consuming preparation to other lawyers as readily as he shook their hand.
For more than ten years, John A. Van Dyke and Halmor H. Emmons were law partners, and both being able men, their firm enjoyed a large volume of business. Halmor’s health continued to decline and in 1853, he tried reduce his hours and spend more time at his Ecorse farm. After John Van Dyke died in 1855, Halmor continued the practice and found himself busier than ever.
Although he was supposedly semi-retired from the law and just on the edge of politics, Halmor Emmons found himself centrally involved in both. At first Halmor was a Whig with free soil leanings, but he helped found the Republican Party in Michigan in 1854. He remained a champion of Republican faith and principles, with the exception of a brief exploratory excursion into the ranks of the Constitutional Union party in 1864.
The Republican Party was first organized in the state of Michigan in 1854, with Charles T. Forhain, Asa B. Cook, George Ingersoll, Erastus Hussey, Hovey K. Clarke, Austin Blair, Zachariah Chandler, and Halmor H. Emmons the most influential organizers. Each of them had been involved in the Crosswhite case as an interest party or counsel. With the help of these persuasive and influential men, the Republican Party eventually destroyed the institution of slavery.
Halmor Emmons, Civil War Secret Agent
With the coming of the Civil War in America, Halmor Emmons skillfully used his geographical location in Detroit, his connections in Detroit, in Michigan, and in Washington, D.C., and his skills in oratory and diplomacy to become an effective Union secret agent in Canada. He commanded a corps of detectives and carried out dangerous assignments, including an early mission to obtain evidence of the Rebel plot to introduce yellow fever infected rags into the ports of Northern states.
Halmor Emmons traveled throughout Canada with his fellow Detroiter George Jerome, who also served as counsel for the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad. One night the two men stopped at a Quebec hotel and heard news of a Union Army defeat. Several Southerners boarding at the hotel celebrated the Union setback with loud enthusiasm. George Jerome possessing a calm and cool temperament, ignored the noisy celebration, but Halmor Emmons who was known to be emotional and excitable except in court, took exception to the celebration. He stood on a stairway overlooking the crowd and shouted that they were cowards hiding in a foreign country instead of staying home and fighting for their beliefs. When the landlord tried to calm him down, Halmor Emmons included him in his harangue. Then he saw that his words were inflaming the situation to into a riot and he used his oratorical skills to calm everyone into civility.
At a hotel during another trip, this time in the company of one of his daughters and George Jerome, Halmor Emmons denounced several southern men for discussing secession sentiments in front of his daughter. Afterwards, George Jerome declared that he wasn’t going to travel with Halmor Emmons again.
A Meeting with Jefferson Davis
In 1866, Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America, rented a house in Montreal. Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior under President James Buchanan and Mississippi Governor during the Civil War, also lived in Montreal.
One day when Halmor Emmons and a fellow attorney from Detroit, E.W. Meddaugh, were in Montreal on business, they met Jacob Thompson who invited them to call on Jefferson Davis. The three men visited Jefferson Davis and were so well wined and dined that they didn’t leave until long after midnight. According to E.W. Meddaugh, Jefferson Davis and Halmor Emmons monopolized the conversation which mostly refought the recent Civil War. Both men were magnificent debaters and they exhaustively argued topics from the cause of the war, the relationship between ex-slaves and white people, the treatment of Rebel and Union prisoners, and the possibilities of reconstruction. At times the debate became loud and fiery, but it didn’t become unruly or rude. E.W. Meddaugh later said that he would have paid a pretty penny for a stenographic recording of the debate.
Attorney Halmor Emmons Becomes Judge Emmons
On January 10, 1870, as the first appointment under a recent law, President Ulysses Grant nominated Halmor Emmons to be a United States Circuit Judge covering the states of Michigan, Tennessee, Ohio, and Kentucky. The United States Senate quickly confirmed him and he received his commission on January 17, 1870.
His new judgeship didn’t bring Judge Emmons instant riches. By 1870, his earnings were estimated at from $30,000 to $40,000 a year, and when he accepted his appointment as a United States Circuit Judge, he accepted a salary of $6,000 a year. The new Judge Emmons made decisions marked with an exhaustiveness of comment and authority, which while voluminous were always consistent and clear in their statements and conclusions.
The newly appointed Judge Emmons spent much time traveling his circuit in other states, but he stayed on his Ecorse farm with his family between trips. He still ruled on some of his favorite maritime cases, including the July 1875 Lake Superior Ship Canal Railroad and Ship Company bankruptcy litigation, which was reported in the New York Times.
Declining health, including the hint of tuberculosis, had plagued Halmor Emmons for years, but cancer of the stomach finally claimed his life. For six months he as confined to his room, but he still gave a few decisions in chambers. Then in March 1877, he abandoned all of his judicial labors because his disease had claimed all of his physical powers. Judge Halmor Emmons retained his mental powers and he affectionately said goodbye to his wife Sarah and his family and friends before his death at age 62, on May 14, 1877. Reverend Dr. Boues of Batavia, New York, who had married Halmor and Sarah Emmons, had been passing through Detroit, and had called on him when he heard of his critical condition. Ironically, he attended Halmor’s death as well as his marriage.
On May 15, 1877, a large crowd of lawyers from the Detroit Bar Association and many friends attended a meeting in Judge Emmons’ courtroom to remember him. A committee of five, Judge Henry B. Brown, Ashley Pond, Theodore Romeyn, Judge Charles I. Walker, and Samuel T. Douglass, was appointed to prepare a suitable eulogy. The next day the Detroit Bar members again assembled in Halmor Emmons’ courtroom and marched to his residence at 133 Henry Street in Detroit to escort his body to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Woodward Avenue and then to Elmwood Cemetery.
Emmons Boulevard and Emmons Court still bear his name and some of the trees that Halmor Emmons and his farm laborers planted still grow in both Ecorse and Wyandotte.
References
Carlisle, Frederick. Chronography of notable events in the history of the Northwest territory and Wayne County
Cumming, Carman. Devil's Game: The Civil War Intrigues of Charles A. Dunham. University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Franklin, John Hope. The Enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Note 17. Judge Halmor Emmons.
Ross, Robert Bud. The Early Bench and Bar of Detroit from 1805 to the end of 1850.
Stocking, William. The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Volume 2, Gordon K. Miller.
Clarence Burton. The City of Detroit, Michigan – 1701-1922
Portraits of Eminent Americans now Living
Halmor Hull Emmons, Jr.
Washington Gardner, History of Calhoun County Michigan
Couch, David A. Sixth Circuit Judge Halmor H. Emmons. The Historical Society for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, 2001.
Michigan Law Journal Volume 2
Palmer, Friend. Vol. 2, P. 31, Winder’s Memories, The Bench and
Bar in the 30s and 40s, Anecdotes of H.H. Emmons; Early Days in Detroit.
Memorial : New York Times
Snell, J. G. "H. H. Emmons - Detroit`s Agent in Canadian-American Relations, 1864-1866." Michigan History 56 (1972): 302-18.
Biographical Directory of Federal Judges
New York Times, May 19, 1877.
“I determined to seek a standing at the bar first, to do my whole duty to my clients, and never seek without the profession the slightest advancement. If collateral success of reputation came, I determined it should be accidental or when I had faithfully tried my utmost efforts at the bar.”
-Halmor Emmons from Portraits of eminent Americans now living with biographical and historic memoirs of their lives and actions – John Livingston New York, 1853, vol. 2 –
Emmons Boulevard lies in Wyandotte, across the Jefferson Avenue Bridge that divides Ecorse and Wyandotte, a bridge that spans the meeting of the Detroit and Ecorse Rivers. The life of Judge Halmor Hull Emmons bridges the pioneer days of legal and social history in Detroit and Ecorse. He gave his name to the farm stretching back from the banks of the Ecorse River (Creek) that he bought despite the puzzled questions of his Detroit contemporaries in the 1840s wondering why he wanted to locate at Ecorse and spend so much money on “that swamp of a place.”
His name on part of the land he bought is just part of the considerable legacy Halmor Emmons left to Michigan. He practiced law in Detroit from 1838 to 1870, carving a niche for himself in maritime and railroad cases. In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed him a Justice of the Sixth District Court in Michigan, and he served until his death on May 14, 1877. During the Civil War, he acted as an agent for the Union government. Despite all of his accomplishments, Halmor Emmons remained true to himself and his family and a likeable Nineteenth century human being.
Halmor Emmons Prepared for a Career in Law
Friend Palmer, in his Early Days in Detroit, observed that his friend Judge Halmor Emmons planted many evergreens and other trees and flowering shrubs on his newly acquired farm. He noted that Judge Emmons made a striking picture riding the River Road when he held court, “with his saddlebags behind him going to and from his farm in Ecorse.”
Halmor Emmons had an excellent reason to buy a 622 acre farm on the banks of the Ecorse River where “the bullfrogs sang.” His poor health had been a nagging background accompaniment to his ambition since his younger days as a lawyer in Cleveland. Years later in Detroit, one of his doctors had advised him, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, to move to a place where he could catch malaria instead of consumption! Another doctor told him to move to Northern Michigan and “live among the pines.” Halmor Emmons listened to his doctors and then he consulted a Wyandotte medicine man who took him to view the land at the point where the Ecorse River meets the Detroit River. Mineral deposits abounded and the Wyandotte Native Americans considered it a healing ground.
The rural charm and quiet of the village of Ecorse at the junction of the Detroit and Ecorse Rivers eight miles away from the clatter and bustle of nineteenth century Detroit soothed Halmor’s city and law practice jangled nerves. Halmor Emmons built a house on the banks of Ecorse River and his biographers said that he traveled there every summer to live “amongst the reeds and the bull frogs.”
Biographies like The Early Bench and Bar in Detroit from 1805 to the end of 1850 by Robert Bud Ross, described Halmor as standing about 5’8” tall with a spare frame. He had a dark complexion, piercing eyes, straight black hair and he wore a full beard and no mustache, the style of his day. The biographies noted that Halmor had a “feeble constitution.”
The years before Halmor had moved to Detroit had been as busy as the growing city itself. When he arrived in Detroit in 1838, Halmor Emmons was still an attorney who had reluctantly left Cleveland to join his father in his Detroit law practice. Born in the small town of Sandy Hill in upstate New York on November 22, 1814, Halmor was the son of newspaperman Adonijah Emmons. As a boy Halmor Emmons developed a love of books that would stay with him for the rest of his life, and when the family moved further west to Keesville, New York, he made an educational arrangement with his father. Halmor attended school three days a week and the other three days he worked for his father’s newspaper. He set type for the paper, worked to advertise it and build up its circulation and delivered it to subscribers. Although Halmor only attended school three days, he earned good grades and his biography noted that Halmor learned most of his Latin grammar while riding his horse back and forth to school or on newspaper business.
As a young man working as a store clerk, Halmor Emmons gave his employer complete satisfaction and also kept up with his studies. Rising at five o’clock every morning, he would fulfill his clerking duties and after that he would study his books every evening until bedtime. Two of his friends from that period of his life, James Cronkhite, who studied literature and John H. Martindale, a talented young lawyer, influenced Halmor so profoundly with their ambition and professional aspirations that he decided to become a lawyer instead of a clerk or an accountant.
In 1837, soon after Halmor Emmons passed the bar, Nicholas Hill, Esq. of Saratoga Springs, New York, offered him a partnership. Halmor was dazzled that the author of Cowan and Hill’s notes wanted him as a partner, but with the backing of his family, Halmor Emmons read law and worked at the firm of Stowe & Stetson in Keesville, in northern New York. Lawyers Stowe and Stetson were not inclined to be hands-on mentors, instead, they gave Halmor the requisite four volumes of Blackstone to study.
Dutifully, Halmor read Blackstone and made notes, but then he rebelled, arguing that Blackstone was dry and uninteresting. Instead, against all precedent and advice, he read lawyers that he considered relevant and interesting, including Chitty’s Contracts, Cowan’s Justice Court Treatise, and Phelp’s Evidences. Halmor thoroughly studied and understood the law books and made notes about the points of law he learned from them. In his two years with Stowe & Stetson, he rapidly mastered the elementary principles of the law, and quickly gained recognition for his ability to prepare briefs.
After his two year stay in Keesville, Halmor moved to Essex, New York, where he spent two years in the law office of Honorable Henry H. Ross. After two years with Judge Ross, Halmor considered the effect on his fragile health of long strenuous hours of study and research it would take to keep up with the lawyers in Albany and other populous New York cities and decided that he would make a move West.
Halmor Emmons Practiced Law in Detroit
Like many others before him, Halmor Emmons thought that the legal work in the West – as Ohio and Michigan were then considered – would be less strenuous, so he decided to move to Cleveland, Ohio and set up practice there. Halmor had also established a connection with one of the prominent lawyers in Cleveland and began to build a promising legal practice when his father asked him to come to Detroit to join the family law firm, A. Emmons & Sons.
It seems that lawyering dominated the Emmons family. Jed Philo Clark Emmons, Halmor’s younger brother, completed his law studies and moved to Detroit in 1836. After Jed established himself as a lawyer, his father Adonijah Emmons who had passed the New York Bar exam years earlier, abandoned his newspaper and moved to Detroit to join his son’s law practice. In 1838, Adonijah and Jed invited Halmor to join them in their Detroit law practice, and in 1838, Halmor moved to Detroit and the father and two sons practiced law as the firm of A. Emmons & Sons.
Halmor Emmons – Marine Lawyer
Detroit’s location on the Detroit River which linked the upper and lower Great Lakes made it an important shipping artery and soon Halmor Emmons turned his attention to marine law. In November 1841, A. Emmons & Sons tried the Fitch & Newberry & Goodell case., deciding the rights to a consignment of goods shipped to Detroit on the schooner Lafayette..Another of Halmor Emmons’ early marine law cases, Hale and Hale vs. the ship Milwaukie in 1844, involved a cargo of wheat that the Hales shipped on the Milwaukie that didn’t arrive in port.
Over three decades later in 1873, Halmor Emmons still tried marine cases, including the famous Dove and Mayflower collision in the St. Clair River. The Buffalo Commercial Advertiser reported on March 26, 1873, that Judge Emmons of the U.S. Circuit at Detroit had upheld the decision of Judge Longyear of the District Court, that the Mayflower was at fault. Judge Emmons found a judgment against the Mayflower for several thousand dollars in damages.
A few days later The Cleveland Herald of March 28. 1873, reported that Judge Emmons had reversed Judge Longyear’s decision in the case of John Demass vs. the brig C.P. Williams. Judge Longyear had ruled in the District Court that a case brought by John Demass, owner of the tug General Grant against the Williams couldn’t be sustained because there was no lien against her.
John Demass appealed the case to the Circuit Court, and Judge Emmons reversed the decision and ordered a decree to be entered in favor of Demass for the entire amount claimed. Judge Emmons said that the time charged for was consumed whether the tug actually hauled the vessel off or not, and the lien existed irrespective of the question whether the tug was actually attached to the vessel or not. Halmor Emmons argued maritime cases during the January 1849 Michigan Supreme Court, including Robinson vs. the Steam Boat Red Jacket and Lawson et al. vs. Higgins et al concerning the building, fitting, and furnishing of a vessel,
Halmor Emmons, Railroad Lawyer
The Western railroads developed at pace with the career of Halmor Emmons, and he quickly saw the opportunity to establish a new and profitable branch of his law practice. Eventually, most of the railroad lines going through Detroit hired Halmor Emmons to be their counsel-in-chief, including the Grand Trunk, Great Western, Detroit & Milwaukee and Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroads. He became known as one of the leading railroad lawyers of his day.
Often, Halmor Emmons allowed his benevolent disposition to overcome his courtroom manner. One Detroit winter, rains had made the roads into the city impassable and the price of wood escalated from $1.75 to $6.00 a cord. One morning Halmor realized that if the poor people of Detroit didn’t acquire some wood, they would freeze. Walking along the street, Halmor asked the first man he came to, “Are you around notifying?”
“Notifying what?” the man asked.
“The meeting in the United States court room to immediately procure fuel for the poor. It takes place at nine o’clock.”
“I had not heard of it, but will do what I can,” the man said.
“Very well, tell everybody you see to come,” said lawyer Emmons.
He stopped other people on the street to tell them the same news, and in ninety minutes the court room overflowed with people. People subscribed thousands of dollars and in an hour or two the immense wood piles of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad were distributed to the poor people who needed wood. The daily papers published the story with great fanfare, but at his request, they didn’t publish the name of Halmor Emmons.
In his role as leading counsel for the Great Western Railroad in its case against the Commercial Bank of Canada, Halmor Emmons traveled to London to meet the president, directors, and leading lawyers of the Great Western Railroad to plan their legal strategy. During the meeting he revealed an encyclopedic knowledge of English railroad law that astonished his colleagues.
After one of the meetings, the railroad president asked Halmor to repeat his presentation so that a stenographer could record it. The railroad president noted that the group had been discussing common law, equity and railroad law, and asked Halmor what he considered to be his specialty. Halmor replied that he knew something about common law, equity, and railroad law, but he considered admiralty law to be his specialty.
Halmor Emmons, Temperance Advocate
Halmor Emmons worked to keep his law practice and his personal life separate, but one case pushed that resolve to the breaking point. Halmor Emmons believed firmly and wholeheartedly in temperance, and he started a small temperance group in Detroit that soon grew into a larger organization.
One of the 1840s cases that Halmor Emmons tried involved the Reverend Dr. Duffield, a learned, and widely known Presbyterian minister lecturing in Detroit. In his lectures Dr. Duffield harshly criticized the Catholic Church and the Irish for what he perceived to be their zealous love of spirits and lack of enthusiasm for the Temperance cause. The lectures created much excitement in Detroit, because at the time many Irish Catholic immigrants had settled there.
Alarmed at Dr. Duffield’s inflammatory words against the Irish, the Reverend Catholic Bishop of the Diocese, perhaps Bishop Peter Paul Lefevere, and several learned priests called a counter meeting to denounce who they considered the Presbyterian rabble rouser and bigot. Heated rhetoric abounded and the atmosphere between the two factions grew tense as the evening progressed. Then Halmor Emmons decided to intervene. Calmly he stood up and he defended Reverend Duffield’s right to preach against Catholicism, the Irish, repeal, temperance, and the welfare, temporal or eternal, of his fellow citizens.
Halmor Emmons argued persuasively enough to convince both sides of the controversy to adopt a resolution affirming the respect everyone felt for Dr. Duffield and acknowledging his human right to be mistaken in some of his facts. The young lawyer’s argument resonated even more powerfully when people learned that he was not a particularly religious person. The case earned Halmor Emons local and statewide recognition.
Halmor Emmons was a consistent and dedicated temperance advocate and worked tirelessly for the cause for most of his life.
Halmor Emmons, Abolitionist
In 1843, Adam and Sarah Crosswhite and their four children, of Carroll County, Kentucky, discovered that their owner, Francis Giltner, intended to break up their family by offering some of them for sale. Traveling the Underground Railroad, the Crosswhites fled north and settled in the Calhoun County, Michigan village of Marshall. Marshall, Michigan, boosted a population of about 700 people, including at least 50 escaped slaves and free black families. Soon the Crosswhites had settled in and were comfortable to the extent that they sent their children to the racially integrated school and eventually had another child.
The Crosswhites enjoyed four years of freedom and then in January 1847, four slave catchers from Kentucky arrived in Marshall. Francis Troutman, a nephew of Francis Giltner, the Crosswhite’s owner, verified the identities of the Crosswhites by hiring a deputy sheriff to visit them disguised as a census taker.
In late January 1847, a slave catching posse came to the Crosswhites’ house. Francis Troutman, David Giltner, son of Francis Giltner, and two other Kentuckians tried to arrest the Crosswhites. Accounts vary as to how the neighbors were alerted, but they were alerted and soon a crowd of about 200-300 black and white Marshall residents surrounded the Crosswhite house.
Eventually, banker Charles Gorham and several other prominent Marshall citizens arrived, and after some consultation, banker Gorham introduced a resolution declaring that the the Crosswhites wouldn’t be captured and sent back into slavery. The townspeople backed them up and Francis Troutman and the other slave catchers were arrested for assault, battery, and housebreaking. They stood trial as the Crosswhites escaped to Canada over the Underground Railroad. The slave catchers returned to Kentucky, where their case galvanized the pro slavery forces and increased the animosity between the North and South.
The slave catchers returned to Michigan in December 1847 to bring a civil suit in the United States Circuit Court for the District of Michigan for $2,752, the supposed slavery value of the Crosswhite family. Abner Pratt, a future judge of the Michigan Supreme Court and John Norvell, a United States Attorney for Michigan, represented Giltner who sued twelve Marshall residents. The number sued eventually shrank to seven Marshall residents, three white men who led the meeting outside the Crosswhite home – Charles T. Gorham, Dr. Oliver Cromwell Comstock, Jr. and Jarvis Hurd, and four black men who stopped the raiders from leaving before reinforcements arrived, Charles Bergen, Planter Morse, James Smith, and William Parker.
The defendants retained Halmor H. Emmons, a future U.S. Circuit Judge, as lead attorney, Calhoun County Prosecutor Hovey K. Clarke and prominent Detroit attorneys Theodore Romeyn, James F. Joy, and Henry H. Wells. On June 1, 1848, the trial began at the U.S. Courthouse in Detroit, on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Griswold Street. United States Supreme Court Justice John McLean, sitting as a judge of the Circuit Court, presided. The jury didn’t reach a unanimous verdict and the case was discharged.
At the second trial held in November 1848, the jury awarded Frank Giltner $1,926 in damages plus costs, relying on the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 as a rationale for the judgment. The verdict paved the way for more slave catchers to attempt to recapture fugitive slaves living in Michigan as well as the entire United States. Halmor Emmons continued to act individually and as an attorney to aid the cause of fugitive slaves in Detroit.
Halmor Emmons and the Portraits of Eminent Americans Biography
In 1853, John Livingston published a book called Portraits of Eminent Americans Now Living with biographical and Historic Memoirs of Their Lives and Actions, New York, 1853, and it included a sketch of Halmor Emmons, among those of many other prominent Americans of the time. Reading the sketch of Emmons and comparing it with other sketches is an exercise in wading through overblown, flowery Nineteenth Century writing to find meaning. Although the work is supposed to be autobiographies that all of the people involved paid to have included in the book, it is difficult to see how Judge Emmons could have written the meandering, ambiguous synopsis of court cases that make up most of his so called biography. There are small nuggets of biographical information included, but they are few and far in between. The Halmor Emmons biography extends 34 pages, the longest in the collection, but most of it concerns what author John Livingston considers his notable court cases.
Portraits of Eminent Americans provoked much unfavorable comment among elder members of the Detroit Bar, and when the criticism reached the ears of Halmor Emmons, he decided to act. He made it his business to either personally or by proxy visit everyone he knew who owned the book and he bought it at any price the owner asked. There is no record of how many books he bought back, out of honest embarrassment at the fawning tone of the biography, but he probably paid a hefty figure for his embarrassment.
Halmour Emmons - Excitable, Emotional, Impulsive Outside of Court
An anecdote about Halmour Emmons illustrates his out of the courtroom personality. For years, Halmor Emmons occupied an office in the old Rotunda Building in Detroit on Griswold Street. The Rotunda featured a large open space in the center with offices and galleries on each floor, arranged so closely together that people could talk to each other from their doorways. Many of Detroit’s leading lawyers including William Grey, Theodore Romeyn, Ashley Pond, and John S. Newberry, occupied offices in the Rotunda along with Halmor Emmons. One day while he sat in his office, Halmor read an article in an agricultural paper stating that gas tar was a certain remedy for bugs and insects on fruit trees.
The article engaged his full attention and set his heart racing, because these same bugs infested his vast orchard in Ecorse. He decided to try the gas tar at once! He jumped into a buggy and went to the Detroit gas works where he bought several barrels of tar and sent them immediately to his home and orchards in Ecorse. By the next day, he had hired a dozen French workers to apply the coal tar to his trees.
The next week Halmor sat in his office reading the next issue of the same paper, and he noticed a paragraph that made him sit up straight and swear. He read an apology for an earlier misprint that said that by mistake the writer had recommended gas tar instead of pine tree tar to use on the insects. Gas tar was poisonous to vegetable life and would certainly kill young fruit trees.
The lawyers with offices near Halmor Emmons rushed to their doors to listen to him curse the agricultural paper “with a fiery vehemence that resounded through the building, at the same time tearing the paper to shreds, gesticulating like maniac, howling like a lion and swearing at intervals that he would sue the condemned paper.”
William Grey asked, “What on earth is the matter?”
Theodore Romeyn said reassuringly, “Oh, it’s only Hal Emmons giving somebody a piece of his mind.”
This week, Halmor Emmons moved just as quickly as he had last week. By night time, the same group of French workers was seen scraping the gas tar from his trees.
Halmor and Sarah Emmons
Outside of his law office, Halmor Emmons is said to have preferred simple manners and tastes, been most affectionate toward his family, and never allowing professional opposition or rivalry to interfere with his social life.
Reverend Dr. Boues married Halmor Emmons and Miss Sarah Williams in Batavia, New York and according to the Portraits of Eminent Americans biography that embarrassed Halmor so much, she was one of the most beautiful and intelligent women in both New York and Michigan. The 1850 census revealed that the Emmons family lived in Hamtramck. By 1860, the Emmons family was living in Ecorse, at least part of the time and they had four children, Clara, Elizabeth, Sarah and Halmor, Jr.
Although Halmor wasn’t a professing Christian, Sarah Emmons was a devout Christian. She believed in the effectiveness of family prayer and conducted family worship with her children in her own bedroom every day. She felt strongly that grace should be said at the table and setting aside her shyness, she decided to ask the blessing at each meal and created a time table when she would begin. The first evening of her grace timetable, Halmor Emmons brought Chief Justice Field and Governor Alpheus Felch to dinner. Later recalling the occasion, Sarah Emmons said, “I felt as if my heart would fly out of my mouth, but I asked the blessing, and I never again felt the least timid. God’s grace was all sufficient.”
Halmor Emmons, Law and Politics
Clients and colleagues alike recognized Halmor Emmons as a young man of great legal ability and predicted that he would be an extremely successful lawyer. When Adonijah Emmons died in 1843, the family legal practice dissolved and Halmor Emmons formed a partnership with fellow Detroiter James Van Dyke.
According to The Early Bench and Bar of Detroit, fellow attorney Levi Bishop remembered Halmor Emmons as a man of legal ability and compassionate action.
If Halmor saw a poor, friendless boy struggling to survive, he would mentor him and lead him toward achieving his potential. He had many apprentices in his law office and he taught each of them the law with the method he had learned himself, instructing them to thoroughly read and understand each book, make notes about the books, and study them and think about the principles of law. Halmor Emmons followed this method for all of his legal cases, even after he became a judge.
Halmor Emmons displayed this same generosity of spirit in handling his law library, one of the largest in the west. He loaned his books to students and young lawyers without charge. He filled his extensive case of briefs with slips, marking their loan to various professional friends and he handed out arguments that had required elaborate, time consuming preparation to other lawyers as readily as he shook their hand.
For more than ten years, John A. Van Dyke and Halmor H. Emmons were law partners, and both being able men, their firm enjoyed a large volume of business. Halmor’s health continued to decline and in 1853, he tried reduce his hours and spend more time at his Ecorse farm. After John Van Dyke died in 1855, Halmor continued the practice and found himself busier than ever.
Although he was supposedly semi-retired from the law and just on the edge of politics, Halmor Emmons found himself centrally involved in both. At first Halmor was a Whig with free soil leanings, but he helped found the Republican Party in Michigan in 1854. He remained a champion of Republican faith and principles, with the exception of a brief exploratory excursion into the ranks of the Constitutional Union party in 1864.
The Republican Party was first organized in the state of Michigan in 1854, with Charles T. Forhain, Asa B. Cook, George Ingersoll, Erastus Hussey, Hovey K. Clarke, Austin Blair, Zachariah Chandler, and Halmor H. Emmons the most influential organizers. Each of them had been involved in the Crosswhite case as an interest party or counsel. With the help of these persuasive and influential men, the Republican Party eventually destroyed the institution of slavery.
Halmor Emmons, Civil War Secret Agent
With the coming of the Civil War in America, Halmor Emmons skillfully used his geographical location in Detroit, his connections in Detroit, in Michigan, and in Washington, D.C., and his skills in oratory and diplomacy to become an effective Union secret agent in Canada. He commanded a corps of detectives and carried out dangerous assignments, including an early mission to obtain evidence of the Rebel plot to introduce yellow fever infected rags into the ports of Northern states.
Halmor Emmons traveled throughout Canada with his fellow Detroiter George Jerome, who also served as counsel for the Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad. One night the two men stopped at a Quebec hotel and heard news of a Union Army defeat. Several Southerners boarding at the hotel celebrated the Union setback with loud enthusiasm. George Jerome possessing a calm and cool temperament, ignored the noisy celebration, but Halmor Emmons who was known to be emotional and excitable except in court, took exception to the celebration. He stood on a stairway overlooking the crowd and shouted that they were cowards hiding in a foreign country instead of staying home and fighting for their beliefs. When the landlord tried to calm him down, Halmor Emmons included him in his harangue. Then he saw that his words were inflaming the situation to into a riot and he used his oratorical skills to calm everyone into civility.
At a hotel during another trip, this time in the company of one of his daughters and George Jerome, Halmor Emmons denounced several southern men for discussing secession sentiments in front of his daughter. Afterwards, George Jerome declared that he wasn’t going to travel with Halmor Emmons again.
A Meeting with Jefferson Davis
In 1866, Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America, rented a house in Montreal. Jacob Thompson, Secretary of the Interior under President James Buchanan and Mississippi Governor during the Civil War, also lived in Montreal.
One day when Halmor Emmons and a fellow attorney from Detroit, E.W. Meddaugh, were in Montreal on business, they met Jacob Thompson who invited them to call on Jefferson Davis. The three men visited Jefferson Davis and were so well wined and dined that they didn’t leave until long after midnight. According to E.W. Meddaugh, Jefferson Davis and Halmor Emmons monopolized the conversation which mostly refought the recent Civil War. Both men were magnificent debaters and they exhaustively argued topics from the cause of the war, the relationship between ex-slaves and white people, the treatment of Rebel and Union prisoners, and the possibilities of reconstruction. At times the debate became loud and fiery, but it didn’t become unruly or rude. E.W. Meddaugh later said that he would have paid a pretty penny for a stenographic recording of the debate.
Attorney Halmor Emmons Becomes Judge Emmons
On January 10, 1870, as the first appointment under a recent law, President Ulysses Grant nominated Halmor Emmons to be a United States Circuit Judge covering the states of Michigan, Tennessee, Ohio, and Kentucky. The United States Senate quickly confirmed him and he received his commission on January 17, 1870.
His new judgeship didn’t bring Judge Emmons instant riches. By 1870, his earnings were estimated at from $30,000 to $40,000 a year, and when he accepted his appointment as a United States Circuit Judge, he accepted a salary of $6,000 a year. The new Judge Emmons made decisions marked with an exhaustiveness of comment and authority, which while voluminous were always consistent and clear in their statements and conclusions.
The newly appointed Judge Emmons spent much time traveling his circuit in other states, but he stayed on his Ecorse farm with his family between trips. He still ruled on some of his favorite maritime cases, including the July 1875 Lake Superior Ship Canal Railroad and Ship Company bankruptcy litigation, which was reported in the New York Times.
Declining health, including the hint of tuberculosis, had plagued Halmor Emmons for years, but cancer of the stomach finally claimed his life. For six months he as confined to his room, but he still gave a few decisions in chambers. Then in March 1877, he abandoned all of his judicial labors because his disease had claimed all of his physical powers. Judge Halmor Emmons retained his mental powers and he affectionately said goodbye to his wife Sarah and his family and friends before his death at age 62, on May 14, 1877. Reverend Dr. Boues of Batavia, New York, who had married Halmor and Sarah Emmons, had been passing through Detroit, and had called on him when he heard of his critical condition. Ironically, he attended Halmor’s death as well as his marriage.
On May 15, 1877, a large crowd of lawyers from the Detroit Bar Association and many friends attended a meeting in Judge Emmons’ courtroom to remember him. A committee of five, Judge Henry B. Brown, Ashley Pond, Theodore Romeyn, Judge Charles I. Walker, and Samuel T. Douglass, was appointed to prepare a suitable eulogy. The next day the Detroit Bar members again assembled in Halmor Emmons’ courtroom and marched to his residence at 133 Henry Street in Detroit to escort his body to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Woodward Avenue and then to Elmwood Cemetery.
Emmons Boulevard and Emmons Court still bear his name and some of the trees that Halmor Emmons and his farm laborers planted still grow in both Ecorse and Wyandotte.
References
Carlisle, Frederick. Chronography of notable events in the history of the Northwest territory and Wayne County
Cumming, Carman. Devil's Game: The Civil War Intrigues of Charles A. Dunham. University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Franklin, John Hope. The Enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Note 17. Judge Halmor Emmons.
Ross, Robert Bud. The Early Bench and Bar of Detroit from 1805 to the end of 1850.
Stocking, William. The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, Volume 2, Gordon K. Miller.
Clarence Burton. The City of Detroit, Michigan – 1701-1922
Portraits of Eminent Americans now Living
Halmor Hull Emmons, Jr.
Washington Gardner, History of Calhoun County Michigan
Couch, David A. Sixth Circuit Judge Halmor H. Emmons. The Historical Society for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, 2001.
Michigan Law Journal Volume 2
Palmer, Friend. Vol. 2, P. 31, Winder’s Memories, The Bench and
Bar in the 30s and 40s, Anecdotes of H.H. Emmons; Early Days in Detroit.
Memorial : New York Times
Snell, J. G. "H. H. Emmons - Detroit`s Agent in Canadian-American Relations, 1864-1866." Michigan History 56 (1972): 302-18.
Biographical Directory of Federal Judges
New York Times, May 19, 1877.