University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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50,000 people, engaged in a lively contest for a supremacy which was not yet assured. The young attorneys became impatient and discouraged, and in 1854 the firm removed to Freeport, Illinois. At the end of two years, Mr. Jameson returned to Chicago. Mr. Hibbard remained in Freeport, having formed a part- nership with Martin P. Sweet, one of the leading lawyers of Northern Illinois. He soon developed a useful acquaintance with municipal affairs. He drafted a charter for the city 3 procured its passage by the legislature 3 became city clerk and city attorney g was appointed a master in chancery 5 and was president of the board of education. His foothold upon the ladder of success was now well established. In 1855 he married his former assistant in the high school, Miss Jane Noble daughter of tl1e Hon. Williaiii Noble of Burlington, a lady whose native ability and varied accomplishments eminently fitted her to be his life-long companion and coadjutor. To them were born three sons and three daughters. The eldest son, NVilliam Noble, graduated at the University of Vermont, and in medicine at Chicago. He married Miss Mary Barker and began the practice of medicine at Hyde Park, Ill. He died suddenly just as he was entering upon a career which promised ability and usefulness. The second son, Grenville Benedict, died in infancy. The third, John Denison, graduated at the University of Mich- igan and is a member of the firm of John Davis 81 Co., of Chicago. He married Miss Josie Davis. The daughters, Edith Nash, Mary Grace, and Katherine Raymond survive. The youngest married Lincoln McMillan, a rising jour- nalist. In the spring of 1860,at the solicitation of his former partner, Mr. Hibbard returned to Chicago and became a member of the firm of Cornell, jameson and Hibbard. This firm was dissolved in 1865 by the election of Mr. jameson to be a judge of the Superior Court of Chicago, a position which he occupied with eminent success for eighteen years. After this withdrawal of judge jameson, Mr. Hibbard associated himself with james I. Noble and Myron B. Rich in the firm of Hibbard, Rich SL Noble, which continued in business until 1870. When Mr. Hibbard returned to Chicago in 1860, he looked about for some place where he could make a quiet suburban home. Such a place he found at Hyde Park, then a suburb of Chicago. Here he acquired the larger part of a block of land, upon which he erected a convenient house, overlooking the many- visaged waters of Lake Michigan. -On this property he lived until his death, in the latter twenty-three years in a more comniodious residence, erected from plans perfected by himself and his wife. 9

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1846. In the autumn of that year he was admitted to the Freshman class of the University of Vermont, at Burlington. In those days the normal occupation of a college boy in the winter was school teaching, for which the colleges provided a long vacation, beginning soon after the thanksgiving holiday, lasting until the first of February, and subject to further continuation. Doubtless young Hibbard made this fact a large factor in his calculations, for he taught during every winter, as well as during the junior fall, of his college course. It is said that while he was a Freshman his maternal grandmother died, leaving him by will the niunificent legacy of forty-six dollars, enough to pay most of his expenses for that year. Board was reckoned in those days at one dollar and a quarter a week. After a struggle, common enough in those days, but which the college student of these times feebly appreciates, Hibbard graduated in 1850, winning the only honor which the college regimen then recognized, election to the society of the Phi Beta Kappa. He was popular with his own class and with the college. He was elected to the presidency of his literary society, was the first president of the college temperance society, and was readily recognized as the leading senior of his year. His principal class competitor was his warm friend, Edward Carter Palmer, of Danville, Vermont, who, like himself, entered the law. Palmer died in 1888, judge of a circuit court in Minnesota. In 18 50 the town of Burlington was the nrst in Vermont to establish a free high school under authority of a recent enactment of the legislature. Mr. Hib- bard, whose capacity as a teacher had been demonstrated in one of the district schools of the town, was chosen as principal of the new school. His assistants were Miss jane Noble, afterwards his wife, teacher of English and French, and the writer of this article, teacher of mathematics. After two years of this em- ployment, having saved from his modest salary of six hundred dollars a year enough to warrant the further prosecution of study in his chosen profession, he declined re-election and entered the Dane Law School of Harvard College. In this movement he was accompanied by john Alexander Jameson of Irasburg, Vermont, who was in age a year his junior. Mr. jameson graduated at the University of Vermont in 1846, and was tutor there in the years 1850-52. After attending a course of lectures at the law school the two returned to Burlington, where Hibbard studied six months in the oiiice of Lieut-Governor Levi Under- wood. In September, 1853, he and his friend, jameson, were admitted to the bar in Burlington. The examiners were George F. Edmunds, afterwards the distinguished senator, and Lucius B. Chittenden, who became Register of the Treasury under President Lincoln. Within a month the two came to Chicago and opened the law office of Hibbard and jameson. Chicago was then a city of 8

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As in Freeport so in Hyde Park, Mr. Hibbard soon identified himself with local interests. He was one of the organizers of the First Presbyterian Church which he served continuously in some capacity, in later years as a ruling elder .and as president of the board of trustees. For fifteen years he was a member of the Board of Education, and for five its president. During his administration of this office he gave especial attention to the development of a well-organized school system, and to the founding of a public high school to be conducted upon the most advanced and scholarly methods. For this school a commodious building was erected under his personal supervision. Long ago the expanding city absorbed the suburban hamlet. Hyde Park ceased to be a municipality and became only a location filled with all the embellishments of a city. By this transformation, however, it lost much of the charm which in the early days was its chief attraction. In january, IS7O, upon the nomination of Chief justice Chase, Mr. Hib- bard was appointed by judge Drummond, of the United States District Court, to be the Register in Bankruptcy for the judicial district of Northern Illinois. The position was recognized at the time as one of much importance, involving as it would the large business which would be furnished by a metropolitan city g but its full significance did not appear until after the great fire of 1871, which brought an appalling number of bankruptcies in its train. The proper discharge of the duties of this ofiice demanded legal ability, judicial equipoise, and business capacity, each of a high order, and each were admirably displayed by the in- cumbent. The business demanded his exclusive attention until, in 1878, the law which established this form of procedure was repealed. After that date no new cases in bankruptcy were recognized, but the final adjustment of cases already before the office was often deferred for many years, and some were prob- ably not finished even at the time of his decease. In all, Register Hibbard settled about three thousand cases. He distributed more than iI3,000,000, and in so doing signed more than 1oo,ooo checks. Some debtors, supposed to be insolvent, paid their obligations dollar for dollar. The business of the Register involved not only legal questions of great moment, but also an infinitude of detail. Everywhere pitfalls beset the feet of an officer who lacked either method or industry. Opportunities for personal gain were abundant and to some would have been alluring. Register Hibbard's business habits and his firm integrity protected him from either form of danger. U. S. judge Blodgett's answer to a question asked him concerning Mr. Hibbard was that it was remarkable that during all the years that Mr. Hibbard IO