Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 3 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 35

How much California owes to the best blond of the South, and especially, perhaps, what inestimable contribution has been made to the California Bar by the commonwealths of the so-called Southern States, may be seen in the splendid career of the late Judge Samuel A. Holmes, who was a native of North Carolina, born at Wilmington, in 1830. He was educated in the same State, first at the well-known academy at Chapel Hill, and then in the University of North Carolina, from whose law department he was graduated with special honors.

For some years after being admitted to the bar, Attorney Holmes practiced in North Carolina, and also served as a member of the State legislature, leaving an enviable record for painstaking fidelity to his constituents. Then he farmed a large plantation in Alabama; but the Civil War breaking out, he was impelled to uphold the cause of his native section, and so he entered and served in the Confederate ranks. After the War, like so many others he returned to the cultivation of the soil in Mississippi; and always believing in doing as best he could whatever he undertook to do at all, he made such a success of his plantation that it became, so to speak, a model for the community.

In 1868, Mr. Holmes came to California by way of the Isthmus and joined the Alabama settlement near Madera, where he farmed successfully for several years. He became a Director of the Stockton Asylum for the Insane, and was also honored by election to the Constitutional Convention. The Convention having provided for this district of the Superior Court, Mr. Holmes was appointed the first Superior Judge here; and in 1880 he was elected to the same office. So well did he satisfy the public, while fulfilling his obligations to the State and meeting his own high sense of honor and ethics, that again in 1890 the voters of the district chose him for Judge. His courtliness, of the old-school type, together with his known integrity captivated everyone, and he was filling the high office when, in December, 1894, he died.

Judge Holmes had married Miss Mary Strudwick, a native of Mobile, Ala., and the daughter of an extensive planter, the ceremony taking place in 1851, and from their union were born Owen and John, both of whom are now dead; Mrs. W. J. Pickett, and W. A. Holmes. W. A. Holmes was the Southern Pacific City Passenger Agent at Fresno, and in August, 1918, he was appointed the chief clerk of the Fresno office of the United States Railroad Administration. The family belongs, therefore, to that group of early and prominent pioneers of which Fresno County is and always will be very proud.