IN MEMORIAM The following is a list of the names of members whose deaths have been reported since the last annual meeting: 26, 1913. 22, 1913. 4, 1913. 14, 1912. 26, 1912. 29, 1913. May 31, 1912. 1912 George S. Billings, Brooklyn... Jan. 14, 1912. 9, 1913. 30, 1912. 9, 1912. 29, 1913. Nov. 4, 1912. 4, 1912. 1892 Stephen B. Griswold, Yonkers.. May 31, 1912. 14. 1913. 15, 1912. Feb. 18, 1913 5. 1913 1883 Bradley Martin, London, Eng.. Feb. 1902 David McClure, New York.... April 1902 Edward F. McCormick, Hudson. May 1904 Roswell R. Moss, Elmira...... Dec. 1876 Irvin W. Near, Hornell.. Elected 1908 Keyran J. O'Connor, New York. March 1912 Died 17, 1913. 29, 1912. 28, 1912. 22, 1913. 25, 1912. Aug. 17, 1912. March 19, 1912. Dec. 17, 1912. Jan. 2, 1913. 1904 23, 1912. 22, 1912. 19, 1912. 20, 1912. 25, 1912. 7, 1912. 19, 1912. 14, 1913. OBITUARIES WILLIAM BARNES, SR. William Barnes, Sr., died at his residence, the O'ConorBarnes Homestead-on-the-Cliff, at Nantucket, Mass., on February 22, 1913, in his eighty-ninth year. Mr. Barnes was born at Pompey, Onondaga county, this State, May 26, 1824, and was a son of Orson and Eliza Phelps Barnes. He was seventh in descent from Thomas Barnes, one of the early pioneers who settled about 1630 near Hartford, Conn., and who fought in the Pequod Indian war. Mr. Barnes received his educa tion in the common and select schools and also attended Manlius Academy, New York. He chose law as his profession and was admitted to practice in Utica in 1846. Coming to Albany he soon occupied a prominent place as a lawyer, and became a member of the firm of Hammond, King & Barnes. The head of the firm, Samuel H. Hammond, was one of the most brilliant lawyers of his day and was district attorney. For many years Mr. Barnes was special counsel of the banking department of the State. In 1855 he was appointed special commissioner to examine the conditions of several insurance companies of New York city, the reports of which resulted in the passage of the act to organize the insurance department. Mr. Barnes was appointed Superintendent of Insurance in 1860, and held office for ten years. He was compiler of the elaborate insurance statistics, his ten annual reports being now established authorities in this country and Europe. He contributed to the development of fire and life insurance during his term of office. After 1870 he acted as consulting counsel for several life insurance companies, and subsequently as special counsel for the city of New York, and later as counsel for several hundred life insurance. policyholders. Mr. Barnes was special counsel for the city of New York in the Astor and other cases against the city for vacating of assessments. Having always taken deep interest in politics, Mr. Barnes became a member of the Liberty party in 1843. spoke for Birney a year later and in 1848 was a supporter of Martin Van Buren for President. Mr. Barnes was one of the leading figures in the organization of the first Republican State convention at Saratoga Spa in 1854. Two years later he organized the New York State Kansas Aid Society, and also assisted in forming the two national Kansas conventions at Cleveland and Buffalo in 1856. He was one of the foremost organizers of the semi-centennial celebration of the Republican party held in September, 1904, at Saratoga Spa. Two years later he had the honor of preparing the paper on the Early History of the Republican Party," which was read at the Fremont semicentennial at Philadelphia. The first teachers' institute ever held in this State was brought about by Mr. Barnes, working in conjunction with his father, the sessions being held at Baldwinsville and Syracuse in 1843 and 1844. He When Mr. Barnes was sent to Russia as a delegate to the International Statistical Congress, in 1872, Czar Alexander II presented him with a diamond ring in recognition of his services. He was a member of the International Peace Congress in Boston in 1904, and a delegate to the World's Peace and Arbitration Convention in New York in 1907. He also was a founder and first president of the Society of Medical Jurisprudence of New York and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society of London. belonged to the New York State Bar Association, the Albany County Bar Association and was a member of the American Society of International Law and the American and National Geographical Societies. He was one of the founders of the Fort Orange Club of Albany, and was a member of the Albany Institute. He was the author of a prize essay or monograph on the "Settlement and Early History of Albany." Mr. Barnes married on July 10, 1849, Emily Weed. daughter of Thurlow Weed. She died in February, 1889. On June 1, 1891, he married Mrs. Elizabeth Balmer Williams, of San Francisco, who survives him with the following children by his first wife: William Barnes, Jr., of Albany; Thurlow Weed Barnes, of New York City; Mrs. George C. Hollister, of Rochester; Mrs. Catherine Weed Ward, widow of H. Snowden Ward, of London, England, and Mrs. Rufus H. Thayer, wife of Judge Thayer, of the United States Court at Shanghai, China. In 1905 Mr. Barnes removed to Nantucket and made his permanent home there in a fine old house on the cliff built many years ago by Charles O'Conor, of New York, leader of the American Bar. There he spent many happy hours with his books. He was a frequent contributor to legal and other periodicals, particularly on the question of insurance. He had fitted up a building for what was said to be one of the finest private law libraries in the country. He had always been in splendid health, and every day until the very coldest weather set in he enjoyed his morning plunge in the sea. GEORGE S. BILLINGS George S. Billings, at the time of his death, on January 26, 1913, was in his fifty-seventh year. He was born in Ontario, Wayne county, N. Y., on November 5, 1856, and passed his youth in that locality, graduating from the Macedon Academy, Wayne county, at seventeen. He then taught school at Macedon for several years, and in 1878, as a law student, entered the law office of the Hon. Luther M. Norton, at Newark, Wayne county, N. Y. In 1879 he married Anna Marshall, of Macedon, N. Y., a schoolmate. In 1880 he entered the office of the Hon. Benjamin F. Downing, long District Attorney of Queens county, at Flushing, L. I., where he completed his law studies and was admitted to the Bar at Brooklyn, N. Y., on September 14, 1882. He then began his individual practice in Brooklyn, which he continued actively to the time of his death. For seventeen years before the election of the Hon. Josiah T. Marean to the Bench in 1899, Mr. Billings was associated in practice with him. |