Edward George Ryan
EDWARD GEORGE5 RYAN (EDWARD4, EDWARD3, THOMAS2, EDWARD1) was born November 13, 1810 in New Castle House, Enfield, County Meath, Ireland, and died October 19, 1880 in Madison, Wisconsin. He married (1) MARY GRAHAM December 23, 1842 in Dixon, Lee County, Illinois, daughter of HUGH JR. and LESLIE ???. She was born in Illinois, and died 1847 in Racine, Wisconsin. He married (2) CAROLINE WILLARD 1850, daughter of ??? PIERCE. She was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Notes for EDWARD GEORGE RYAN:
Baptismal certificate was signed by Rev.
Lawrence Graham R.C., pastor of the parish of Rathcone (dated March 4, 1834).
Edward eventually left the Roman Catholic church and attended the Episcopalian
church.
In 1820, at age 10, Edward George was sent to Clongowes Wood, a Jesuit college outside of Dublin, where he remained until 1827 studying Christian doctrine, Latin, Greek, French, mathematics, history and geography. The intensive religious training which he received at home and from the Jesuit fathers left a deep and abiding imprint on his sensitive nature.
His parents intended him to enter, the priesthood, but at age 17 started to study law (1828-1829). He had expensive habits, and longed to sail to the United States, where he envisioned great prosperity.
At age 20, in 1830, he sailed to New York. He studied law in New York, and supported himself by teaching.
He received his second naturalization papers April 9, 1836 (NY or Chicago?) and was admitted to the bar on May 13, 1836.
In 1836 went to Chicago. Was an editor of a Chicago paper in 1839 - a democratic paper called the Tribune (which died in 1841). On March 4, 1841 he was appointed State's Attorney for the 7th Judicial Circuit of Illinois. Moved to Racine shortly after marrying Mary in 1842. He was elected a delegate of the first constitution convetion held in 1846. Moved to Milwaukee in December of 1848 after his wife Mary died in 1847.
During 1870-1873 he was the City Attorney for Milwaukee. In june, 1874 he was called by the Governor to be Chief Justice of the State. Service in Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1874-1880
Lived in Racine, Wisconsin in 1847 when son Hugh was born. Soon after his son's birth, he moved to Milwaukee.
Stone was not erected until 1909/1910 when the State Bar Association raised money to create a memorial to Judge Ryan – prior, grave was not marked.
More About EDWARD GEORGE RYAN:
Baptism: November 19, 1810, Parish of Rathcone, Ireland (Roman Catholic)
Burial: Forest Home Cemetery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Marriage Notes for EDWARD RYAN and MARY GRAHAM:
Marriage certificate - married by John Hogan, Me Me E Church
More About EDWARD RYAN and MARY GRAHAM:
Marriage: December 23, 1842, Dixon, Lee County, Illinois
More About EDWARD RYAN and CAROLINE WILLARD:
Marriage: 1850
Child of EDWARD RYAN and MARY GRAHAM is:
i. HUGH G.6 RYAN, b. June 14, 1847, Racine, Wisconsin; d. March 1915, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; m. JULIA R. LAWRENCE, June 09, 1870, St. Lukes Church, Dixon, Lee County, Illinois; b. Lee County, Illinois.
Notes for HUGH G. RYAN: Went to school out east, then entered the office of Attorney-General Edsall of Illinois where he studied law for 2 years. He then went to Kansas and was admitted to the bar of that state in 1873. He practiced law there for one year. (prosecuting attorney of Rooks County, Kansas), He returned to Illinois in 1874. Came to Milwaukee in 1876 and entered the law office of Hon. Luther S. Dixon who had recently retired from the chief justiceship of Wisconsin. In 1878 received the appointment of court commissioner.
He is a Democrat as was his father.
Marriage Notes for HUGH RYAN and JULIA LAWRENCE:
Marriage Certificate - married by Wm. H. Williams, Rector of St. Lukes, Dixon, Illinois
More About HUGH RYAN and JULIA LAWRENCE:
Marriage: June 09, 1870, St. Lukes Church, Dixon, Lee County, Illinois
The rest of this document was sent to me by Rick O'Ryan in January, 2000 (and came originally from his late father, William D. O'Ryan)
Edward George RYAN (1810-1880)
American Jurist.
This jurist and colourful figure in the history of the bar in Wisconsin was born at Enfield, County Meath, Ireland on November 13, 1810, the son of Edward and Abby (Keogh) Ryan.
He was educated at Clongowes Wood College where he spent seven years. In 1830 he emigrated to the United States and completed his preparation for the bar in New York, teaching the while. After admission to the bar in 1836 he moved to Chicago. In 1842 he married Mary Graham, who died in 1847; in 1850 he married Caroline Willard Pierce. He had moved to Racine, Wisconsin in 1842, and to Milwaukee in 1848. From Racine he was elected delegate to the first constitutional convention in which he took a prominent part and which gained him recognition. He was a law-partner of James G. Jenkins and Matthew H. Carpenter. Upon the resignation of the chief Justice Dixon he wee appointed by Governor Taylor to succeed him. His renowned violent temper caused the appointment to be a matter of controversy. A contemporary wrote of him that “his passion burned when lighted like a flaming volcano shaking him with fearful violence and belching the hot lava of his wrath on everything and everybody which stood in opposition”. This trait apparently did not mar his effectiveness as a Judge and he was much respected for his judicial opinions. Deeply religious, born a Roman Catholic, he subsequently became a member of the Episcopal Church. He lived in Madison while on the bench and died 19 October l880. He was survived by three sons. (Dictionary of American Biography, 1935; W.D. Lewis, Great American Lawyers, 1909; P.M. Ried, The Bench and the Bar of Wisconsin 1882; Milwaukee Daily Sentinel of October 20, 1880.)
The Chicago Tribune:
The Tribune was not the first newspaper of this name in Chicago. A year
before the Now York Tribune was founded a man named E. G. Ryan came down
from Milwaukee in 1840 and established in Chicago a weekly called the
Tribune. Ryan's paper was Democratic supporting Martin van Buren for a
second term. When William Henry Harrison won the presidency Ryan's weekly
paper folded up after having printed just 52 issues. There was no
connection between this paper and the known Chicago Tribune. This was
started April 4, 1840 and discontinued August 21, 1841
(Kinsley, Philip, The Chicago Tribune, its first hundred years, Vol. I, 1847-1865, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1943, pp. 9-10)
The Library of Congress has the following by Edward George Ryan (1810-1880): Argument of Edward G. Ryan, on the trial of Levi Hubbell, judge of the Second judicial circuit, before the Senate of Wisconsin, on an impeachment preferred by the Assembly of high misdemeanors in office. Reported by T. C. Leland. Madison B. Brown, 1853.
There is a volume in the Library of Congress by Gilbert Einstein Roe edited by him, entitled Selected Opinions of Luther S. Dixon and Edward G. Ryan, late chief justices of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Chicago, Callaghan & Co., 1907. 615 pp.
The following biography is in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography:
Born in County Meath, November 13, 1810, he began the study of law before coming to the United States in 1830, and then continued it in New York while teaching school, and was admitted to the bar in 1836. He was an editor of the Chicago Tribune 1839-1841 and then removed to Wisconsin, settling in 1842 at Racine and in 1848 at Milwaukee. He was a delegate to be state constitutional convention of 1846 and to the Democratic National Convention of 1848. In 1862 as chairman of a committee of the Democratic state convention he drew up an address to the people of the state which became known as the “Ryan Address”. He was the city attorney of Milwaukee in 1870 to l872 and in 1874 succeeded Luther S. Dixon as chief justice of the state holding that Position until his death in Milwaukee October 19, 1880. (Nat'1 Cyclopedia of Amer. Biog., N. Y., James T. White, Vol. XII, 1904, p. 230.
The following is a copy of an article which appeared in the journal of the American Irish Historical Society. A copy of the galley proofs was sent to Sir Andrew Ryan in London for his use in the preparation of his clan study, and I (W.D. O'R) photocopied them:
CHIEF JUSTICE EDWARD GEORGE RYAN OF WISCONSIN
Joseph C. Walsh
On June 17, 1874, on the resignation of Chief Justice Dixon, the Governor of Wisconsin, Hon. William R. Taylor, appointed Edward George Ryan to that office. He was elected without opposition in 1875, and remained on the Bench until his death, October 19, 1880.
Earlier that year, in response to a request for details of his life, for publication, he wrote a memorandum addressed to his son, which is quoted in Dr. Bradley Winston's “Story of a Great Court,” (Flood, Chicago, 1912):
“I was born at New Castle House, my father's residence, near the village Enfield in the County of Meath (Ireland) November 13, 1810. My father, Edward Ryan, was a son of the family of Ryan of Ballinakill. He had married Abby, eldest daughter of John Keogh of Me. Jerome, the chairman of the famous Catholic committee. At the time of my birth, my father was a prosperous man, the owner of lands purchased in part with the fortune he received with my mother. Between the peace of 1815 and the passage of the Corn Laws he was ruined as almost all others were who owed money on land. He then removed to Balckhall in the County of Kildare, which he rented and were he lived till near his death, barely supporting his family. My mother's father was a very wealthy man who died while I was a mere youngster. He left an annuity to my mother for the purpose of educating her children. There were ten of us, and we all received an excellent education. I received mine at Clongowes Wood College, where I remained for seven years, from 1820 to 1827. I was always destined for the law, in the study of which I was nominally engaged in 1828 and 1829. But I was an expensive and improvident youth, and a great burden to my father. I had exaggerated notions of the ease with which men get on in this country, and I finally obtained my father's consent to come here. So I came in 1830. I did not know then, but have long since known that my father expected me to fail and to return to Ireland. I was too proud to do so. I studied law in New York, as I could, supporting myself by teaching. I was admitted in 1836 and came that year to Chicago. Up to that time I had never known what sickness was, but I was particularly subject to miasmatic diseases, and I was in very poor health during the whole time I remained in Chicago. “In 1842 I was married to your mother, Mary, eldest daughter of Hugh Graham, and immediately moved to Racine. I lost your mother in 1847, and, as soon as I rallied from the blow, prepared to move to Milwaukee, and moved there in December 1848. When I first went to Racine it seemed doubtful which would be the larger place; that doubt was settled long before I moved. In 1850 I was married to Caroline Willard, daughter of ??? Pierce of Newburyport, Mass. The rest you know as well as I. Above you have the outlines of my life. You can fill it up for Mr. Reed, using no superlatives and making it a mere biography. I gave the same data to the late Colonel Slaughter, who wrote and extravagant panegyric, of which I am heartily ashamed. I have an instinctive aversion to putting my face, of which I am not proud, in a book, and I have a perfect horror of the distorted caricatures of woodcuts which they put in Wisconsin publications.”
He received his citizenship papers on April 9, 1836, and on May 13, the same year, was admitted to the bar. In 1839 he was editor of the Tribune, a Democratic paper, in Chicago. It died in 1841, and on March 4th of that year he was appointed State's Attorney of the seventh judicial district of Illinois. On his marriage, in 1842, he went to Racine, Wisconsin. In the next ten years his position as one of the leading lawyers of the State was firmly established. In 1852 he had offices at 172 East Water Street, Milwaukee, and was in a curious, ill defined partnership with a judge (Stow) who had just left the bench. In 1854, when he appeared in the trial that led to the famous decision by Chief Justice Taney over the right of the United States to seize a fugitive slave, the triumph of his opponent Byron Paine, afterwards Judge, was held to be enhanced by the fact that Ryan was “one of the greatest men of the profession.” In the end, when the judgement was reversed, and Ryan was shown to be right, his prestige was increased. In 1852 he was chosen to prosecute Judge Hubbell in impeachment proceedings before the Senate of Wisconsin, and it was said long afterwards that “his powers of satire and invective and his eloquence placed a trial before the Senate of Wisconsin in the front rank of the great trials of history.” In 1855 he led an attack in the courts which compelled Governor Barstow to make way for his opponent, Governor Bashford, who had been cheated of victory though ballot frauds.
He was a delegate to the first constitutional convention of Wisconsin in 1846, and took a leading part in its proceedings. In 1863, in the Democratic Convention, he was given a few votes in the selection of a nominee for Chief Justice, but withdrew after the first ballot. When that office came to him by appointment, eleven years later, he said: “This is the summit of my ambition. It is the place to which I have looked; but it has been so long delayed that I had ceased to expect it.” He had been, in 1870, 1871, and 1873, City Attorney of Milwaukee. In 1873 he delivered an address before the Law School of the University of Wisconsin which had come to be regarded as a classic, both for its form and for the high ideals to which it gave expression as affecting the legal profession and especially the judiciary.
It is probable that the fame of this address had something to do with reconciling people to his appointment as Chief Justice, which for a time was severely criticized. The reason for this, as charitably expressed later, was that, with all “his great learning and unsurpassed eloquence, some of the eccentricities and weaknesses of genius inhered in his character.” He had a temper so violent and sudden that, according to the observation of Senator Vilas, who admired him deeply, it “subdued and governed him, turning his power to his own destruction, and made him terrible to his friends as well as to his enemies.” Another friend said of his disability that from youth his temper had been beyond his control, that “trivial incidents aroused it, drove clients from his door and well high wrecked his professional career.” When free of this infirmity, he was, on the testimony of one of his colleagues, “compassionate and considerate,” and those who sat with him asserted that, in judicial conferences, he never asserted himself in the way those who knew him had reason to apprehend, but maintained a serenely judicial attitude on all such occasions. In person, according to a contemporary, Ryan was at the height of his reputation as an advocate, “he is five feet ten inches in height, and weighs about 180 pounds, neither of robust nor delicate frame, but muscular, sinewy, and capable of much long and continued labor. His movements are quick and his step elastic. His complexion is florid, his hair light, his eyes blue, large and expressive.” And there is the comment by Dr, Winston that when he was bowed with age, one was impressed by “the piercing brilliancy of his eyes, which seemed almost starting from his head as he bent them on a lawyer arguing a case before him. With that gaze bent upon one, any attempt to lead the judicial mind astray seemed worse than useless.”
On October 13, 1880, he presided for the last time, and on the 19th he died. He was buried in Forest Home cemetery, Milwaukee.ige.