(Portrait)
James Kent Hamilton |
J.
KENT HAMILTON.
The close of the year 1918 brought with it the close of
a life, which for sixty years has been one of great
usefulness and of unselfish effort in behalf of the
community, the state and the country in which he lived.
James Kent Hamilton was a distinguished member of the
bar, an official over whose public career there fell no
shadow of wrong nor suspicion of evil, and a man who in
every relation of life measured up to the highest standards.
There are few men who have figured so prominently in public
life, who have been touched so lightly by calumny or envy.
The great public paid to him a tribute of well merited honor
and respect and his close associates prize his friendship as
something most dear and precious.
Mr. Hamilton was born in Milan, Erie county,
Ohio, May 17, 1839, his parents being Thomas and Sarah O.
(Standart) Hamilton of Auburn, New York. His
ancestors were English and Scotch and all came to America
prior to the year 1700. One or more of his direct
ancestors served in the Revolutionary war and through the
maternal line he traces his ancestry back to one of the
Mayflower passengers. From Massachusetts a removal was
made by later generations of the family to New York and
thence to Northern Ohio, where settlement was made in
pioneer times. James Hamilton, the grandfather,
took up his abode at Lyme, Ohio, about 1830, and Thomas
Hamilton, the father, born in Washington county, New
York, accompanied his parents to this state and for many
years was a prominent citizen and leading merchant of Milan,
Erie county, successfully conducting an extensive grain
business, for at the date Milan was one of the centers of
the grain trade. In 1861 he removed to Toledo and
contributed in large measure to the upbuilding of the city
as a grain center, continuing actively in business there
until his death in 1876. In politics, too, he figured
conspicuously as a supporter of the whig party and at one
time represented his district, comprising Erie and Huron
counties in the Ohio senate. His wife was also of New
England lineage, although a native of New York.
James Kent Hamilton
was one of a large family and he did the hard work, enjoying
the benefits of the sunshine and out-of-door life, which was
the heritage of those early days. After acquiring the
ordinary common school education he entered Kenyon College
at Gambier, Ohio, and while attending this school financial
reverses of the family made it necessary for him to put
forth efforts and make sacrifices unusual even in those
days, in order to complete his course of classical study.
He was graduated with honor, however, in 1859 and received
the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In 1862 he won the
degree of Master of Arts and in 1812 his Alma Mater
conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Law.
In his student days he had taught school at intervals and
was successively under the preceptorship of Hon. R. C.
Hurd at Mount Vernon, Hon. S. F. Taylor at Milan
and William Baker at Toledo, winning admission to be
bar in 1862, when in his twenty-third year.
Mr. Hamilton did not enter
upon active practice, however, but joined the army as a
private in the One-Hundred and Thirteenth Regiment of Ohio
Volunteer Infantry, with which he served until the close of
the Civil war. For bravery and gallantry he was
promoted to the rank of captain and also served as an
adjutant. He participated in all the battles in Middle
Tennessee, including Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge and
later he was in the Knoxville campaign and in 1864 was with
the army of the Cumberland. He participated in the
engagements at Resaca, Rome, New Hope Church, Kenesaw
Mountain, Peachtree Creek and the Atlanta campaign and after
the fall of the city of Atlanta he went with Sherman on his
march to the sea and thence northward through the Carolinas,
participating in the battles of Averysboro and Bentonville
and finally in the Grand Review at Washington, D. C., where
wave after wave of bayonet-crested blue swept by the
reviewing stand, while over broad Pennsylvania avenue was
suspended a banner bearing the words "the only debt which
the country owes which she cannot pay is the debt which she
owes to her soldiers." Fifty years later, in 1915,
General Hamilton, marched in the last grand
preview down Pennsylvania avenue, the occasion adjutant
general and chief of staff of the brigade commanded by
General John G. Mitchell. He was with Granger
and Steedman when they marched to the relief of the
army of the Cumberland, their troops saving it from
annihilation on the 20th of September, 1863. For Mr.
Hamilton's conduct in this sanguinary engagement he
was complimented for gallantry in the reports of his
superior officers.
With the close of the war and his admission to the bar,
Mr. Hamilton at once entered upon active practice in
Toledo and while advancement in the law of proverbially slow
no dreary novitiate awarded him. Later he was admitted
to practice before the United States supreme court. He
advanced steadily in his profession and in 1867 was elected
prosecuting attorney of Toledo and in the same year was
chosen prosecuting attorney of Lucas county, which office he
filled with marked capability for two terms, or until 1871.
In 1875 the people of Toledo called him to serve as city
solicitor and his efficiency in that office was indicated by
his reelection. By this time Toledo had become fully
alert to the value of his service and his public spirit and
in 1887, by popular suffrage, called him to the office of
mayor and reelected him for a second term. It was a
common saying, heard to this day, that "Kent Hamilton
was the best mayor Toledo ever had." He declined to
serve for a third term but he rendered valuable service in
other connections, filling the office of member of the board
of sinking fund trustees for a period of twelve years and
member of the board of education for seven years, being most
of this time president of the board. From 1896 until
1900 he was judge advocate general on the governor's staff
and in 1913 he was made, against his urgent protests and
personal inclination, president of the commission to prepare
a new charter for the city of Toledo. These long and
continued activities indicate most forcibly and eloquently
the respect and esteem in which he was held but they more
strongly indicate a notably loyal public spirit and a
willingness to share in the utmost burdens of self
government.
Mr. Hamilton figured in business circles as a
director of the Ohio Savings Bank & Trust Company from its
organization until his death and as a director of the B.
A. Stevens Company. But it was as a member of the
bar that he was most prominently known and he always
regarded himself as a lawyer and not as a business man or
political leader. For forty years he maintained a
position of distinction at the Lucas county bar. He
appeared as counsel for the defense or prosecution in almost
all of the leading cases tried in the county and his careful
and comprehensive analysis, combined with his intimate
knowledge of the principles of jurisprudence, made him a
most forceful figure in the courts. He was a man of
the strictest integrity and possessed a most lofty
conception of professional ethics and obligations. One
who knew him long and well said: "He was a lion when
aroused in the cause of his client or the discharge of his
public duties, while in ordinary life he was as gentle and
amiable as a woman."
Mr. Hamilton was married twice. On the
12th of September, 1876, in Toledo, he wedded Sibyl
Williams, a daughter of J. R. and Sarah (Langdon)
Williams and a descendant of Stephen Langdon, one
of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His
first wife died in the year of their marriage. On the
27th of July, 1898, General Hamilton was married to
Miss Ethel Beecher Allen, a daughter of Edward
Herrick and Agnes (Beecher) Allen. Through the
maternal line she is descended from the well known
Beecher family, active in collegiate, patriotic and
church societies, in which the members of the family have
held many offices. Her grandfather, Rev. William
Henry Beecher, is mentioned elsewhere in this work.
Mrs. Hamilton was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, and
holds the degrees of A. B. and A. M. from the Kansas State
University, where she was a member of the Phi Beta Phi and
was elected a Phi Beta Kappa. The Daughters of the
American Revolution appointed her organizing agent of
Missouri, serving in 1896-97. Since coming to Toledo
she has been a member of Ursula Wolcott Chapter,
Daughters of the American Revolution. On Apr. 2, 1913,
she began her duties as state regent of Ohio. She is
also a member of the Colonial Dames, the United States
Daughters of 1812 and the Society of New England Women.
To Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton was born a son, Allen
Beecher Hamilton, whose birth occurred July 23, 1900,
and he graduated from Harvard in 1922. The family
circle was broken by the hand of death, when on the 29th of
December, 1918, General Hamilton was called to the
home beyond. He was of the Protestant Episcopal faith,
a member of Trinity church, in which he served as vestryman.
In politics he was always a republican, standing high in the
councils and activities of the party in city, state and
country. During his college days he became a member of
the Delta Kappa Epsilon and of the Phi Beta Kappa. He
belonged to the Toledo Club, to the Commerce Club and to the
County Club and he was a member of the Grand Army of the
Republic, of the Loyal Legion of America and of the Sons of
the American Revolution. He became one of the charter
members of Forsyth Post, G. A. R., which was organized Nov.
19, 1866, and afterward transferred his membership to Toledo
Post. At the national encampment held in Toledo in
1908 he was chairman of the local executive committee and
was elected senior vice commander in chief of the order for
the United States. From July, 1914, until July, 1915,
he served as department commander of Ohio and he always
cherished his association with his old army comrades.
Many times he was called upon to speak at the funerals of
his military associates and friends, his gift of oratory
enabling him to pay beautiful tribute to their memory.
Mr. Hamilton was also an active member of the old
Maumee Valley Historical Society during its existence and he
likewise held membership in the Maumee Valley Pioneer and
Historical Association. All who knew him, and his
acquaintance was extremely wide, bear testimony to his
kindly spirit and sympathetic nature. He never amassed
wealth and this was due to the fact of his generosity, as he
was continually extending a helping hand where aid was
needed. It is doubtful if any man in public life in
Toledo had so few enemies. The reason for this was
found in his kind-hearted, sympathetic nature, his open and
frank sincerity and the fact that his motives of conduct in
public and in private were alike above suspicion. In
one of the memorials prepared following his death it was
said: "The emotions which were in the heart at the
final farewell to one we long have cherished could group
themselves about no finer or worthier character than
James Kent Hamilton. He walked with hardly a
misstep in the middle way of that wise faraway Greek who
wrote so much but never so well as in describing the golden
mean as the surest road of fair and duly proportioned
happiness. His life in all its relations was plain,
prudent, open, even upright. Its loyalty and
manliness, its power and tenderness, its rectitude and
sympathy may well be an example to the younger members of
the bar that such 'all the year 'round' virtues can still be
at their best amid the fierce contention and confusions of
the forum and the close, annoying exactions of public office
and sordid business." He gave freely and generously to
the world, of those powers with which nature had endowed him
and which he had cultivated through a long and useful life,
and viewed form any standpoint he measured up with the
greatest and best in manhood and in citizenship.
Source: Toledo and Lucas
County, Ohio 1623-1923 - Vol. II - Publ. 1923 - Page 268-274 |
