LIST OF MEMBERS ELECTED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING 1903.

Obituaries.

CHARLES S. BAKER.

Charles S. Baker was born in Churchville, Monroe county, N. Y., February 18, 1839. As a boy he attended the Caryville Collegiate Seminary and Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, and in 1857-8 taught school in LeRoy. In 1859 he began the study of law in the office of Danforth & Terry, in Rochester, and was admitted to the Bar in December, 1860. When the Civil War began he responded to the first call for volunteers, going to the front as first lieutenant of Co. E, 27th Regiment, N. Y. Vols. In the first battle of Bull Run he received disabilities which forced him to resign his command.

Mr. Baker was for three years a member of the Monroe county Board of Supervisors, for two years a member of the Rochester Board of Education the second year serving as president of that body in 1879, 1880 and 1882, a member of the Assembly of this State, in 1884 and 1885 a member of the State Senate, and a member of the House of Representatives in the Forty-ninth, Fiftieth and Fiftyfirst Congresses.

On the 22d of June, 1861, Mr. Baker was married to Jane E. Yerkes, who survives him. Six children were the result of this union, of whom five are still living.

Mr. Baker died in Washington, D. C., on the 21st of April, 1902.

Mr. Baker was one of the delegates to the convention held in the Assembly chamber November 21, 1876, for the

purpose of organizing the New York State Bar Association, and continued a member of the Association from that date until his death. He was elected Vice-President of the Association from the Seventh District in the years 1884, 1885 and 1886.

WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER.*

[Reprinted by permission from the Report of the American Bar Association for 1902.]

William Allen Butler, the son of Benjamin Franklin Butler, Attorney-General of the United States, was born at Albany on February 20, 1825, and died at Yonkers on September 9, 1902. He was admitted to the Bar in 1846, and his active professional career covered a period considerably longer than half a century.

Mr. Butler began the practice of the law with the advantage and the peril of a professional association with a great lawyer his father, whose name and fame, as a lawgiver and as an advocate still are, and long will be, remembered. If such a reputation be inheritable, it is a burden or a benefit to the heir, according to his capacity to administer the succession. Mr. Butler's career at this Bar may be summed up by the statement that his death left it undiminished.

Such a memorial as this has for its purpose a record of character, and a tribute of respect, and not a narrative of incidents. Mr. Butler's life, indeed, is conspicuous, not for striking events, but for a steady and continuous labor in an absorbing profession, and an equally steady and continuous flow of consequent reputation and prosperity. The graceful style, the poetic fancy and the brilliant wit which were among his native gifts, and which were effective professional weapons in his hands, certainly served him

*Memorial notice presented to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York for the First Department.

also for his own pleasure and that of others in moments of diversion, but by those who have known him at the Bar, it will unhesitatingly be acknowledged that his life work did not differ in character, if it did in the degree of prosperity and reputation by which its was deservedly rewarded, from that of any successful lawyer, charged with the responsibility of affairs of great importance and constantly absorbed in the exacting labor of adviser and advocate.

A reference to a few of the important cases in which Mr. Butler was engaged will serve as evidence of his rank in the profession :

In the case of the steamer Pennsylvania (19 Wall., 125) Mr. Butler was successful in obtaining a reversal, by the Supreme Court of the United States, of the decrees, both of the Circuit and District Courts, which had followed decisions of the English Admiralty Court and of the Privy Council. This decision conclusively settled the doctrine in collision cases that a vessel violating a rule of navigation laid down by statute must prove affirmatively that such violation could not have contributed to the disaster. The decision has been repeatedly cited and followed and has been of immense value in inducing compliance with the provisions of the statutes.

In The Scotland (105 U. S., 24), where Mr. Butler was again successful in spite of adverse decisions below, the Supreme Court of the United States established the rule that owners of foreign vessels may obtain the benefit of our statutes for the limitation of liability of owners of vessels for disasters on the high seas.

In Sturgis v. Spofford (45 N. Y., 446) Mr. Butler successfully maintained the constitutionality of the law of 1853, establishing the Board of Commissioners of Pilots; and in People v. Vanderbilt (26 N. Y., 286) he obtained