JUDGE ALEXANDER BALDWIN.

 

            IN Nevada he was known as "Sandy" Baldwin; a small man about five feet eight in height, weighing perhaps 135 pounds. Had he been born a bird, he would have been a game rooster or an eagle.

            He was the son of the famous Judge Joe Baldwin of Alabama, who wrote "Flush Times in Alabama." Sandy was not as great a lawyer or as profound a scholar as his father, but was growing to be both when overtaken by an untimely death.

            He was one of the partners of William M. Stewart in Virginia City when he was appointed a United States circuit judge for Nevada.

            This appointment sobered him a good deal, for he fully realized the responsibilities of the place, and notwithstanding his impetuous nature and the strong prejudices which he never sought to conceal, in his rulings an enemy was liable to fare better than a friend, for his thought seemed to be : "Would it not be a shame were I to permit my personal dislikes to sway my judicial judgment in weighing the legal rights of this man." So he gave him the benefit of all his doubts.

            But it was when practicing law in Virginia City that he shone best. His audacity was something beautiful to see, and he kept his natural impudence burnished bright, though his hearty good nature made every one fond of him.

            One day in a case a great deal of trouble was encountered in selecting a jury. The attorney opposed to Sandy was one given to spending much time on details, some of them trifling in importance. Finally, Sandy appealed to the court, pointing out that half the day had been spent on trifles not worth considering, adding that a few minutes were as good as a few hours in reaching a conclusion whether a man was competent to sit on a jury or not.

            His opponent replied that he was bound to use every

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precaution and that he wanted the cause of his client tried by a jury of his peers.

            Quick as a flash Sandy responded : 'I see, you are expecting a break from the Nevada penitentiary and that all the convicts will make a rush for Story county to serve on juries."

            In those years of 1861-62 and '63 about the hottest thing in Storey county was politics. Parties were about equally divided and party feeling ran very high. A contingent of the Knights of the Golden Circle was there and it was understood that if a break was made in California a like stand would be made in Virginia City. There were many sharp quarrels and here and there a man was killed, but when Sumter was fired upon, most of the Douglas Democrats joined with the Republicans, while the southern wing of the Democracy clung to the cause of the south.

            Sandy was from the South, but he was a Union man, and this made the chivalry hate him worse than they did northern born Union men. But Sandy cared nothing for that.

            One day a southern man was telling of the loss his family in the south would suffer should their slaves be freed, where- upon Sandy offered to bet him a thousand dollars to five hundred that no member of his family ever owned a slave ; that in the south he belonged to the "poor white trash," that even the slaves had a contempt for, adding: "I know you by your walk. You have that shamble which is hereditary with your class of poor whites."

            Before the autumn election in 1864 the Democrats had a county convention in Virginia City and determined to have a torchlight procession at night. The torches were secured and a brass band engaged and the procession started. It made a fine showing as it marched up C Street ; the band playing and the men cheering.

            Sandy was watching, but suddenly stepped from the side- walk into the narrow street, and, touching one of the link men on the shoulder, with a stately courtesy, said : 'Excuse me, my friend, and pardon my suggesting that you carry your torch nearer vertical, lest you burn the hair from the teeth of the gentleman next behind you." He deserved killing every

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day for the things he said, but somehow they never killed him.

            The Republicans held a convention in Virginia City once, and a somewhat noted speaker was very bitter on the south, of the men who lived on the unpaid labor of the slaves, and spoke generally disdainfully of southern men and methods.

            When he finished, Sandy sprang to his feet and made a speech, the tenor of which was something like this :

            "I hope never to hear another speech such as we have just listened to, for it is hard for some of us to bear.

            "The south is wrong now, but they are a brave and impetuous race and I can understand how, environed as they are, as their lives have been, they have been led into their present attitude. I am satisfied that had I remained there, I should have been with them heart and soul. But no matter how much in the wrong they may be, there is no nobler race of men than they ; they treat their slaves better than the gentleman who has just addressed you would had he been a slaveholder among them ; and the man who discounts the manhood of the men or the womanhood of the women of the south, is to be pitied for his ignorance, for he knows nothing of what he essays to discuss."

            Judge Baldwin had a high and proud career in Nevada and grew in intellect as the years went by, but suddenly in the very prime of his manhood and when his abilities were at their highest, he was, in 1869, killed instantly in a railroad collision near Alameda, California.

            He was greatly missed and mourned in Nevada.

            He would have been a distinct personality in any country ; so game was he, so alert, so audacious and yet so kindly. He had all the attributes that go to make up a brilliant and stalwart man ; he was an honor to his name, to the state that gave him birth, to the state in which he was so conspicuous a figure for fifteen years. He was buried from the home of his great relative, John B. Felton, in Oakland, and the winds that sweep in through the Golden Gate pause to murmur over no braver grave than his.

            Judge Baldwin's wife was one of the most beautiful women of the west coast. About the time of the judge's death

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the wife of General John B. Winter, Superintendent of the Yellow Jacket mine at Gold Hill, died. The families had been intimate friends and two or three years after the death of Judge Baldwin and Mrs. Winter, the General and Mrs. Baldwin were married, and a little later removed to San Francisco.

            From the beginning of the mining on the Comstock a weird woman lived there. She kept a boarding house at first in Gold Hill, but became the owner of twenty feet in one of the Gold Hill mines; the Alta, I believe. "Sandy" Bowers, an illiterate and uncouth man in many ways, a rough miner, also owned twenty feet of the Gold Hill ground. He boarded at the house of this woman and soon made her acquaintance ; they, were each receiving large dividends from their interests ; at last they were married and their united ground, when sold, made them very rich.

            Mrs. Bowers claimed to possess the second sight, and I guess she did, for she told people many things which seemed to have no more substance than a vagrant dream, but, as a rule, they came true. She was called "the Washoe seeress," and some of the strongest men on the Comstock were wont to consult her. She knew Judge and Mrs. Baldwin well, as she did almost everyone else in western Nevada.

            One day in 1877, I think, she met R. M. Daggett on the street and Daggett accosted her in his cheery way, with : "What's the news, Mrs. Bowers?"

            She replied : 'I have something very strange to tell you, Mr. Daggett. I was alone riding in my buggy down in the valley last night, when suddenly Sandy (Baldwin) sat on the seat beside me. I hate to have him come, for he is always jollying me the same as he used to when in the old days I met him here in Virginia City.

            'But last night there was an exultant, joyous look on his face a kind of glory and he held up before me a pair of white gloves you never saw anything of such celestial whiteness as were those gloves, and he whispered : 'Alice will be a bride again tonight.' Have you heard any news from San Francisco this morning?"

            Daggett replied that he had not, that he had just come

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down town and was on the way to his office. As he ascended the stairs, he was saying to himself : 'The old lady is growing more and more uncanny." He entered his office, hung up his hat and sat down at his desk, when there before him lay a sealed telegraph dispatch. He tore it open and read the following :

"SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., --

"Editor Enterprise, Va. City, Nev.

            'Mrs. John B. Winters -- she who was the late Judge Alexander Baldwin's wife, died in this city at 1 :15 o'clock this morning."

            All their friends hope that the phantom gloves were drawn in all their whiteness upon her ghostly hands that night and that their second honeymoon is to last through all eternity.