- FRANK BAIN PHELPS (deceased) was born at Montville, Geauga
Co., Ohio, July 21, 1865,
- and the following November was brought by his parents to
Janesville, Wis. His early training was received in the public
schools of that city, and he spent one year at Lawrence University,
Appleton. He then attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating
in 1887. His course in the University was along scientific lines,
but he took much interest in newspaper work, and was connected
with the student publications. Soon after his graduation he was
appointed city editor of the Green Bay Gazette, and displayed
such ability in this work that he was called from Green Bay to
Hancock, Mich., to take editorial charge of the Hancock Journal.
Here his knowledge of civil engineering and the theory of mining
proved of great value to him. He became exceptionally well versed
in Wisconsin and Michigan mining matters, and his letters to
the New York trade journals attracted so much attention that
he was offered an editorial position on the Engineering and
Mining Journal of New York. While in this position he gained
a very thorough knowledge, from a newspaper standpoint, of the
coal trade and the metal markets.
- Mr. PHELPS next joined the staff of the Dow-Jones New Agency,
which brought him more
- directly into contact with the great financial centers, and
enabled him to gain a wide experience in business and financial
matters. Afterward he became financial editor of the New York
Recorder, a position he held for two years, and until
the paper was discontinued. He then joined the staff of the New
York Connecticut Advertiser, as chief of its Wall street
bureau, retaining this position, and displaying remarkable ability
in meeting its varied and critical demands, until ill-health
necessitated his retirement from all newspaper work, in the winter
of 1897. That spring he came to Janesville, and remained here
a few months without apparent improvement. He went back to New
York, and died there, Jan. 7, 1898. He had a short but brilliant
career, and his vital powers burned quickly out with a splendor
all their own. His life was sincerely led, his purpose high and
noble, and his duties well performed.
- MILTON MONROE PHELPS: A Memorial Adopted by the Rock
County Bar Association,
- and field in Court April 23, 1900. - On the 27th day of September,
1898, Milton Moore PHELPS passed into the larger life, after
an earthly pilgrimage extending over a little more than fifty-nine
years, thirty-three of which time were passed among us as a resident
of our city, and a member of our Bar. All who immediately knew
this man, as was the fortune of the writer of this Memorial to
know him, knew that in his home, among his friends, and wherever
he found persons who were willing to give an unprejudiced and
candid hearing to all sides of the question, he was the most
gentle, considerate, and loving and sweet-spirited of men. The
integrity of his character was his leading quality. None excelled
and few equaled him in this respect. No one who knew him ever
doubted the rugged honesty of his nature.
- He never stooped to tricker, he never resorted to hypocrisy,
he was absolutely free from the
- pretension of deceit. His nature was frank, open, cheery.
He was sincerely attached to his friends, and absolutely loyal
to them. He was Democratic in his ideals and actions, and entirely
free from dogmatism. He was not a genius, and yet he had a well-rounded
and evenly-developed intellect. He was not a great lawyer. He
was safe and sound and industrious, one who never disgraced his
profession, or his brother members at the Bar. He was a man of
force, he enjoyed business, and like to be a producer of things.
After all man's title to remembrance by his fellow men must rest
upon his virtues rather than upon any vagaries of intellect,
sometimes designated genius. We are oftentimes compelled to define
and illustrate qualities by comparison. And not only a fair but
a good way to judge the qualities of men generally denominate
virtues is by comparing them with the same qualities in those
illustrious individuals whose names and fame grow more luminous
as the years go by, and whose characteristic virtues have been
preserved to us by the printed estimates of competent friends.
And if we shall find that the qualities of our friend whose memory
we seek here to perpetuate, and the record of whose virtues we
would fain preserve by placing it among the archives of this
court, differ only from those in degree rather than quality or
kind, we have a right to congratulate ourselves that it has been
our privilege to have been associated with our brother professionally
and officially for so many years.
- We have often been struck in noticing how closely those qualities
in our brother correspond with
- those justly described by his eulogists to the Father of
his Country. We make bold to copy a few statements from Sparks'
and Lee's eulogies of Washington in order that the similarity
may be observed.
- "His moral qualities were in perfect harmony with his
intellect; duty was the ruling principle of his
- conduct, and the rare endowments of his understanding were
not more constantly taxed to devise the best methods of effecting
an object, than they were to guard the sanctity of conscience.
No instance can by adduced in which he was actuated by a sinister
motive, or endeavored to attain an end by unworthy means. Truth,
integrity and justice were deeply rooted in his mind, and nothing
could rouse his indignation as soon, or so utterly destroy his
confidence, as the discovery of the want of these virtues in
any one in whom he had trusted. Weakness, follies, indiscretions,
he could forgive; but subterfuge and dishonesty he never forgot,
rarely pardoned.
- "He was candid and sincere, true to his friends, and
faithful to all, neither practicing dissimulation,
- descending to artifice, nor holding out expectations which
he did not intend should be realized.
- "As a husband, son and brother, he was tender and affectionate.
Without vanity, ostentation or
- pride, he never spoke of himself or his actions unless required
by circumstances which concerned the public interest. If he had
one passion more strong than another, it was the love of country.
The purity and ardor of his patriotism were commensurate with
the greatness of its object. He was second to none in humble
and endearing scenes of private life; pious, just, humane, temperate,
sincere, uniformly dignified and commanding, his example was
edifying to all around him, as were the effects of that example
lasting. To his equals he was condescending; to his inferiors
kind; and to the dear object of his affections exemplarily tender.
Correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence, and virtue
always felt his fostering hand, and the purity of his private
character gave effulgence to his public virtues."
- Judge PHELPS was born Jan. 13, 1839, at Freedom, Portage
Co., Ohio, in the Western Reserve,
- the oldest son of Abram and Marietta PHELPS, both of whom
survive him. His boyhood and early manhood were spent amid stirring
scenes connected with the anti-slavery excitement, which took
an acute form in the Western Reserve. The name of his birthplace
suggest a love of liberty, so that when the scenes preceding
the Rebellion had culminated in the fire on Fort Sumter he was
ready to don a uniform and start for the front. In 1861 Mr. PHELPS
was just finishing his college course at Meadville, Penn., and
upon graduating at once enlisted in the Pennsylvania Reserve.
And from that time until June, 1863, serving as lieutenant and
adjutant, he confronted the enemy's guns, only omitting from
that time sixty days, when he was at home recovering from a gun-shot
wound. His service in the army was one of conspicuous gallantry.
He participated in several important engagements of the war,
and his person was six times hit by Rebel bullets. At the second
disastrous battle of Bull Run, while the forces confronting in
this part of the field in which Mr. PHELPS was serving were becoming
broken up and disorganized, and at the moment when he had succeeded
in rallying a considerable force composed of men from different
broken and flying regiments, he partly turned around to life
a fallen comrade, when he himself received a Rebel bullet which
passed entirely through his lungs. Though desperately wounded
in a manner that would mean death to most men, his excellent
constitution and exemplary habits enabled him to rapidly regain
sufficient strength so that in a little less than sixty days
he was again upon the battlefield, and participated in the battle
of Fredericksburg, where, from exposure and lying on wet ground,
the old injury was so aggravated that he was reluctantly compelled
to take his discharge.
- On June 16, 1864, he was married to Henrietta BAIN, the daughter
of Rev. John BAIN, at
- Franklin, Venango Co., Penn., and in 1865, they removed to
the city of Janesville, and Mr. PHELPS entered at once upon a
successful practice of law, which practice was continuous, except
as interfered with by the performance of his judicial duties.
Mr. PHELPS during his residence here served his county and city
in several different judicial capacities, among them being justice
of the peace, public administrator, and at the time of his death
he had been for nearly six years judge of the municipal court
for Rock county. In the performance of his judicial duties he
was ever honest, painstaking, impartial, and faithful. And while
he was kindly sympathetic with unfortunates who were brought
before him, he ever tried to administer the law so as to deter
people from committing offenses, and to protect the public in
all personal and property rights. Mr. PHELPS had no sisters,
and but one brother, and he died in the year 1863 from disease
contracted in the army. During their married life there were
born to Mr. and Mrs. PHELPS four children, two of whom died in
infancy, and the youngest of the survivors, Norris PHELPS, was
drowned when he was fourteen years of age. The last year of Judge
PHELPS' life was one of peculiar affections. In the month of
December, 897, his beloved wife, after a protracted illness,
passed to her eternal reward. On the 7th day of January following
his only son, Frank, followed his mother, but leaving a widow,
Elizabeth C. PHELPS, who supplied the place of a dutiful daughter
to Mr. PHELPS after his wife and son had been taken from him,
and her loving kindness and faithful care mitigated the suffering
of his last days. And he had the satisfaction of knowing that
she would be left to perform in his stead the loving duties to
his aged parents which he had fondly expected to be permitted
to perform.
- The apparent cause of Mr. PHELPS' death was the result of
colliding with a train while riding a
- wheel. Those who knew him and his family were inclined to
connect that injury with the death of his wife and son. Brave
and strong, he had faced death in many ways; on the battlefield,
and in behalf of the needy and the weak. He had met his full
share of accidental injuries. He seemed almost superior to death
from physical causes. His domestic life had been one of felicity,
and so strong was his life entrenched with the light of home,
wife and children that, when they were taken away, the steadying
prop of his life was gone. Such was his nature that he would
not bend, and could only break.
- Up to within a few short months of his death his thoughts,
energies, were concentrated upon his
- family, and they were here and with him. The mind was alert
and vigilant, quick to care for them, and, for their sake, for
himself. Then all was changed. Their abiding place had been transferred
to another and better world. The home scenes that knew him here
would know them no more forever. And, while Mr. PHELPS would
not shrink a duty or evade a responsibility, and would bravely
fight the battle of life to the end alone if need be, it is not
too much, we think, to say that the calamities which had broken
the heart of this brave soul somewhat dimmed the alertness and
activity of his consciousness applied to mere earthly or physical
conditions, and that it was want of alertness which resulted
in the injuries which terminated his earthly career.
- And so here to-day we pay our last tribute to the man we
all honored, and whose life and
- character honored us. One by one we followed this loving
family to their last resting-place here on earth. We mingled
our tears with his, as one by one the jewels of his life were
taken from him. So now that love has conquered death, we will
rejoice with him in the grand reunion with the loved ones in
that land where sorrow and death and separation shall never come.
-
- [Signed]
- WILLIAM SMITH,
- Chairman of the Committee.
-
- Taken from "Commemorative Biographical Record of
the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette Wisconsin"
(c)1901, pp. 176-179.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
|