The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Judicial history runs deep in county
The photos of 24 judges past and present line the upper floors of the Lorain County Justice Center, 225 Court St. in Elyria.
One local storyteller is behind a project in writing the colorful stories of the Lorain County jurists, both men and women, who held the gavel dating back to 1860.
Don Hilton, of Oberlin, is a familiar face among those who explore the stories of the local judicial system. Hilton, author of “Murder, Mysteries and History of Lorain County, Ohio: 18241956,” is back at it penning each of the 500-word biographies for former Lorain County Common Pleas Court judges.
The biographies were framed just after Christmas 2019.
Originally, the descriptions of the judges were slated to be unveiled in a ceremony in May before the novel coronavirus pandemic slowed down much of the court’s activities.
Now, they can be found on the sixth and seventh floors of the Justice Center.
The project, in collaboration with Lorain County Court of Common Pleas Court Administrator Sherry Clouser, began in March 2019, with Hilton dedicating anywhere between 50 and 100 hours for each judge.
He utilized available public records, historical documentation, and in some cases, meeting with family members in examining their tenure on the bench.
Hilton also received assistance from the Supreme Court of Ohio in documenting the structural and administrative changes to Ohio courts since their formation.
“Whenever you do a project like this, you always learn so much,” he said. “And there’s a lot of related information that you have to learn in order to understand enough to write the biography.
“So, how the courts work, how they’re restructured, what limitations there were on the people that were being elected, how that person was selected to be elected. So, you have to understand all that stuff.”
Character of the judges
Hilton said in his role as the architect of the words that lie below the official judicial portraits, his focus was not so much on cases, but on the character and personality of each judge.
“The biography is really about the judge and sort of how they worked within the court system, a little bit about their personality,” he said. “And cases really aren’t mentioned very much at all.
“And then we decided on about 500 words. So, every set of 500 words, there’s about anywhere from 10 to 20 pages of notes.”
The colorful stories of who they were when they took off the robe, also took some precedent, Hilton said.
Working to verify the stories with the fact-checking process often revealed more lively narratives, he said.
Like for example, the judge who kept a separate house to continue caring for the stray cats that frequented his property while serving on the bench, Hilton said.
“The things that you learn as you go from them are the things that really make these biographies sparkle,” he said.
One of the judges loved to hunt squirrels; another liked to ice skate.
That information was included in the biographies.
The biggest complication in the process was making the final call on what information should make it into the final biography, Hilton said.
Above all, in documenting their stories for future generations, he wanted to portray that the judges were human beings and fallible, and to add their unique paths to the bench.
“If you read through them, I always mentioned the races that they lost,” Hilton said. “The other thing that always struck me was is, that you don’t get to be a judge just by standing around, right?
“You have to have the work to become a judge in one way or the other. Some judges were very political and they maintained those politics through their judgeships.
“Some judges were very apolitical. And once they were elected, they retracted from politics, even before there were rules that forced you to do right.”
The people behind the gavel
Stevenson Burke was elected to Lorain County Common Pleas Court in 1861.
Burke served until 1869. According to Case Western Reserve University’s Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, Burke was a noted railroad litigator.
He also is known for the management of several railroads in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Indianapolis and Mahoning Valley in ad
dition to Central Ontario Railways, serving as president.
Burke perhaps is best known for his 1881 purchase of controlling interest in the Nickel Plate Railroad, acting as the agent for William K. Vanderbilt, who owned the competing Lake Shore and Michigan line.
Hilton said Burke was elected as the first judge in Lorain County.
Lorain County formally was in a judicial district with Medina and Summit counties.
It took 10 years for the population to grow to a point where Lorain County residents could elect their own judge.
“Whenever you do a project like this, you always learn so much. And there’s a lot of related information that you have to learn in order to understand enough to write the biography.” — Don Hilton, Oberlin author and historian
Serving
The biographies of the judges paint a picture of the generation in which they served.
“Early on when you were a judge, you could be a judge, he could be the president of a bank,” Hilton said. “You could run your own business, so you have an extreme amount of political, social and business power.
“So, as a judge, you could meddle in elections, you could handpick a candidate to run for office, throw your backing behind them. Judges, nowadays, aren’t allowed to do that, of course.
“But, these guys have the tools, and so, if they chose to, they could become very, very rich.”
The collection of jurists and their stories also give historians a snapshot of the institutional shifts.
Party affiliation
For the first 60 to 70 years of Lorain County, only elected Republican judges were elected until a tie in the 1915 prompted judicial expansion.
Horace G. Redington (1915-1929), a Democrat, was appointed to the bench in 1914 and started serving in 1915.
Facing off against Republican W.R. Thompson resulted in a tie, affirmed by three separate recounts.
After the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in Redington’s favor, Ohio’s Republican controlled legislature created a new judgeship enabling Thompson to take the gavel.
The administrative changes and stories behind the men and women keeping order in Lorain County have a deep and resounding history.
In addition to Common Pleas Court judges, Hilton is working on documenting the history of Lorain County Probate Court judges.