”John Ware settled at Mantorville in the practice of law in 1867. For a long time before he had been an able representative of the bar of Fond Du Lac County, Wis., established in business at Waupun. He was born in Broome, County of Sheffield, Canada, to which place his parents had removed from Massachusets. He was educated at Potsdam, N. Y. At Hogansburg, N. Y. he pursued the study of law, and tried his first law-suit defending and securing the acquittal of an Indian, who was charged with the crime of murder. Mr. Ware continued with great ability the practice of law at Mantorville, after his settlement there till the 14th of November, 1872, when he died, and his remains were taken for burial back to his old home at Waupun. His widow and several of his children are still residents of this county.
In those days, prior to 1872, the bar of the county was ‘ in its glory,’ and those then in practice have come to be designated ‘ The Old Bar’ of the county. Business was then for the most part good, and many cases were constantly arising of considerable importance and of deep interest to the professional lawyer who enjoyed ‘ hard study.’ Then the uniform courtesy of the members of the bar toward each other, and the evident desire of all to get at the merits of each controversy and to disregard mere technicalities, greatly lightened the labor and made pleasant the otherwise vexatious pursuit of the practitioner at the bar. But about this time a great change, or series of changes, took place, which resulted in the breaking up and scattering of the ‘Old Bar’ of Dodge County. Unhappily for the old towns of the county and for the lawyers and their fellow townsmen who had invested their all and established their homes in those towns, the construction and operation of the Winona & St. Peter Railroad through the county left those towns ‘ out in the cold,’ and began, in spite of all energy and enterprise, to turn away the tide of travel and to scatter and divide up the business. Capitalists and business men began to move away and the business to rapidly fall off, while the investments and improvements already made became of little value and were daily shrinking more and more. Besides all this, the enactments of Congress, enlarging the jurisdiction of the United States Courts was concentrating a large part of the most remunerative law business into the large cities, at the expense of the lawyers in the country towns. After a hard struggle against fate, in which the people freely expended their money and their energies in the vain endeavor to secure the building of a railroad to their doors, it became apparent that the accumulations of the past must be abandoned. Men of such activities could not remain to ‘rust out’ in a dead town. Judge Lord, having been elevated to the bench, removed with his family to Faribault. La Due and Pratt had already gone from the county, as had also J. Newhart whom we forgot to mention till now. He was a young man of fine business talent, who studied with Mr. Pierce and was admitted about the year 1868. For a year or two he pursued the legal profession in copartnership with Mr. Pierce at Mantorville, and then removed to New Dim, where he still resides. General Edgerton secured the remunerative position of Railroad Commissioner, which, for the time, at least, took him out of the practice and away to the State Capitol. Mr. Cooley removed to Minneapolis, and Mr. Pierce to St. Paul. Death carried away Mr. Ware, and Mr. Taylor removed to Winona, and thus the ‘Old Bar’ was broken up and its history completed.”
Reference Data:
History of Winona, Olmsted and Dodge Counties, H.H. Hill, Publisher, 1884, pages 853-5
