WILLIAM H. NORRIS. Celtic blood has flowed in the veins of many of America's worthi­est sons and most patriotic citizens. "Of Irish" and "Scotch-Irish origin," are phrases of frequent occurrence in the biographical literature of this country, as many of the readers of that literature know. The early annals of the Republic are filled with the names and accounts of the eminent services of such men as John Rutledge, Andrew Pickens, John Barry and others of lesser note, while in more recent times there is hardly a position of distinction under the government, civil or military, which has not been worthily filled by direct descendants of Irish settlers on American soil, often of the first and frequently of the second generation. Representatives of this people have also filled all of the professions, and have occu­pied every field of commercial activity, aspiring in less numerous instances to the arts, the sciences and to literature, rising to distinction in all of these and enriching all of them by the wealth of their genius as they have exalted them by the nobility of their characters. And this, true of this people in the higher walks of life, is eminently true of them also in those less exalted stations which have fallen to their lot along with the common run of humanity.

Prior to 1850 by far the larger percent­age of foreign immigration from any one country to the United States came from Ireland, so that the people of that country, next to the descendants of the English colonists who were already established here, had the best opportunities for secur­ing a foothold in the Western world.

To this class of citizens the subject of this sketch, William H. Norris, belongs, being of Irish descent of the first gen­eration.

The father of our subject, Thomas Norris, was born in the town of Bandon, on Bandon river, Ireland, in 1815. At a proper age he married Miss Mary Nash, of the same place, born in 1816, and in 1850 they immigrated to the United States and settled at Stoneham, Middlesex county, Mass. There the subject of this notice was born, February 3, 1857, being the youngest of a family of six children. His parents coming to Iowa in 1861, his youth was mainly spent in this state, one year in Delaware county, the remainder in Linn county, whither his parents moved after their first year's residence in the state and where they now reside. He grew up on the farm, and his time, in his earlier years, was divided between his duties as a farm hand and his attendance at the district schools where he re­ceived the rudiments of an ordinary English education. He remained on the farm until he was seventeen, entering Cor­nell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, at that time, 1873, where he began a course of instruction which was calculated to fit him for a profession he was destined to fill. His course in college however was not unattended by those numerous hinder-ances which the aspiring youth of limited means encounters in his toilsome progress to one of the learned professions. His studies were frequently interrupted and he was forced to earn by school-room labor the means with which to pay his way through college. Alternately teach­ing in the district schools of Linn county and attending college as his means would allow, he mastered the greater part of the curriculum  of Cornell College, graduated from the Commercial College of Daven­port, Iowa, and entering the law depart­ment of the State University at Iowa City in 1881 received his diploma from that institution a year later, graduating in a class of one hundred and thirty students and being selected as one of ten to repre­sent his class on commencement day. Mr. Norris took high standing in the university, not only with his fellow-stu­dents but with the teachers and regents, as is evidenced by the fact that in the fall of 1881 he was elected class president and was recalled the year following his graduation to sit as a member of the board appointed to examine students who were applicants for diplomas in the law depart­ment of the university.

In 1882 he removed to Manchester and began the practice of his profession. The next year he formed a partnership with A. S. Blair, which continued about four years, when it was terminated by mutual consent, Mr. Norris continuing in the practice alone. He was alone till 1888, when the firm of Blair, Dunham & Norris was formed, of which he is now a member and which is one of the leading law firms of Manchester as well as one of the tenth judicial district of Iowa.

It would not be proper to say of Mr. Norris, as is frequently said of other law­yers who have reached some distinction in the professions that his "rise at the bar was rapid." It was not; he found his rise at the bar impeded by the same diffi­culties that all young lawyers must expect to encounter who are not born with the traditional silver spoon in their mouths, and these difficulties were often not loss hard to contend with than those which he had found in the pathway of his earlier progress to his profession. But gather­ing strength with years and the success­ful mastery of opposing situations and events, he did gradually rise at the bar. In fact he can still be called a rising member of the profession and this without disparaging in the least the suc­cess he has already attained. His practice has been of that general sort which comes to the country practitioner and he has learned through usage, if not other­wise, to turn his hand with equal facility to all classes of litigation, from an ordi­nary suit in replevin to one involving the most complicated questions in commercial and corporation law. Mr. Norris has been at the bar hardly ten years; he is still young and one may safely say that the greater part of his professional career is yet before him. No summary of his professional labors therefore should be attempted here. Yet, that the few years which he has spent at the bar have not been barren of results, reference to a case or two in which he has been chief or asso­ciate counsel will serve to show.

The case of Wood against the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company is more or less familiar to the people of northeast Iowa, who became interested in it from the attention which it attracted when it was under trial, and whose inter­est became permanent by reason of the rule of law which it ultimately established governing the liability of railway compa­nies for damages to perishable personal property under certain conditions. Wood was the complainant in the lower court and the railway company defendant, Mr. Norris being of counsel for Wood. Wood sought to recover damages of the railway company on account of its failure to fur­nish cars at a stipulated time in accordance with an agreement made with the com­pany's agent for the transportation of cer­tain perishable property and by reason of which failure the property was injured. The case was twice tried in the lower courts and three times in the supreme court, the decision turning in each instance upon the authority of the company's agent to make such a contract and how far such authority was to be considered as a mat­ter of fact to be determined by a jury, and how far as a matter of law to be inferred from his position as agent. The lower courts held, and they were sustained by the supreme court in its first two decisions, that such authority must be proved in each instance by those seeking to take ad­vantage of it, and therefore found against the complainant Wood; but upon a final hearing in the upper court these decisions were over-ruled and the principle estab­lished that such authority might be rea­sonably inferred from the agent's position: that in fact a railway company by placing an agent in charge of its business at a station and empowering him to con­tract for the shipment of property "holds him out," in the language of the law, as possessing the authority tract with reference to all necessary and ordinary details business, he being within the that business a general agent, and that therefore the company is liable for dam­ages for injuries sustained by shippers where transportation has not been fur­nished within the time promised by the agent. This decision has had a marked effect in facilitating the transportation of perishable personal property throughout the state, and has not been without its influence in shaping the decisions of the courts of other states.

Another case in which Mr. Norris was of   counsel and  which    attracted  more attention even than the one just referred to, as it was of vastly more far-reaching effect and involved a greater saving to the general   public,  was  that   known   as a " barbed wire case," begun by the Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company, of Worcester, Mass., against the "Beat-'em-all"   Barbed    Wire   Company,    of Waterloo, Iowa, seeking to close up the latter's establishment under claim of the Glidden patent, which they held and by which they had, prior to that time, controlled the manufacture of all the barbed wire fences in the United States.    Mr. Norris was one of the  attorneys repre­senting the “Beat-'em-all " Barbed Wire Company.    This case, begun in the United States circuit court   for   the   northern district of Iowa, is still pending in the United States supreme court, but is prac­tically settled.    It occupied most of the time for four years in trial from the filing of the suit till its final hearing in the cir­cuit court, a large part  of  which   time was consumed in the taking of depositions, testimony being gathered from numerous witnesses in widely  scattered   localities. The facts contended  for by Mr.  Norris and his associate counsel that the Glidden patent was  void (1) on account of abandonment and (2) by reason  of prior use were successfully established, and  with the foundation of their claims gone the  the cases  of the Washburn & Moen Company collapsed.  This company had numerous cases pending in different states through­out the country, all resting on the Glidden patent, which cases were abandoned after the decision of this case. There were numerous smaller establishments manu­facturing barb-wire which had been pay­ing to the Washburn & Moen Company royalties on their products for years but which discontinued these tributes as soon as this case was determined. The case has doubtless been forgotten by more than half the readers who knew of it at the time, and many probably never heard of it, yet nearly every citizen of every agricultural and stock-growing com­munity has in some way been benefited by it.

A criminal case  of some  moment  in which Mr.  Norris was one of the attorneys, and a case which he chiefly man­aged, was the State of Iowa against Otto Westermeir, of Dyersville, Iowa, charged with murdering his invalid wife by setting fire to his house and burning her therein, there being other offenses alleged against the defendant, but all involved in the principal charge of murder. Associated with Mr. Norris in the case was J. H. Trewin, of Earlville, Delaware county. The case was twice tried, both times in the Buchanan county district court at In­dependence, before Judge J. J. Ney. On the first trial the jury, after much deliberation, stood ten for conviction and two for acquittal. On the second trial, after deliberating about forty hours, the jury returned a verdict of acquittal.  In these cases Mr. Norris won much popularity with the public and was highly com­mended by members of the bar for the successful part he took in each.

Expanding our view from the sphere of his professional labors to that of bis political activities, it will be proper to re­cord that the subject of this notice has occupied as conspicuous a position before the people of northeast Iowa in the poli­tics of that section as he has at the bar, and that his labors have become quite as well known to the general public in that capacity as in the more restricted one of bis profession.   Mr. Norris is a republi­can, stanch  in the support of the princi­ples of his party and their able defender on the public platform.    He stands well in the councils of his party and has been its trusted representative many times dur­ing the past ten or twelve years.    He is the present chairman of the republican central  committee of   Delaware county, a position which he has held, with the exception of two years, since 1883. He has attended all the republican state conven­tions of Iowa for twelve years, and he has been an active attendant also at all the district conventions. In 1884 he was a delegate from the third congressional district of Iowa to the Republican na­tional convention at Chicago which nomi­nated Blaine and Logan for President and vice-president of the United Stakes. He is at present a member of the repub­lican state central committee from the third congressional district of Iowa.

Being now only in his thirty-fourth year, Mr. Norris may be said to be a young man. He comes of good, sturdy stock, above the average in longevity. He is a man of steady habits. He possesses a good constitution, a well-organized ner­vous system, a large capacity for work; and he is not without ambition. He therefore has a future before him. As a lawyer he has many of the lasting ele­ments of success. He has an aptitude for his profession which not all members of it possess in the same degree, and he dis­charges the exacting duties of his pro­fession with an interest and a zeal that distinguishes the true lawyer from the professional accident wherever found. In the examination of witnesses and the handling of cases before juries, he is specially qualified to succeed. He pos­sesses the breadth of thought that enables him to seize upon the strong points of a case and keep them clearly in view amidst all the entanglements of intricate cross-examination and countervailing testimony. And before a jury he has the happy fac­ulty of bringing the most difficult ques­tions both of law and of fact within easy range of the mental vision of the most ordinary juror, clothing his ideas in plain language and using those illustrations which, from their similarity to things known, readily carry the meaning in­tended to the mind of the listener. In these labors, as in all others where per­sonal presence counts for anything, Mr. Norris holds a great advantage over the average lawyer, for he possesses a splen­did physique and much of that indefin­able quality which for want of a better understanding of its exact nature we call magnetism, the potency of which is ac­knowledged by all, but the subtle nature of which none have clothed with the lan­guage of understanding.

Mr. Norris, active as he has been in politics, has never sought the sovereign vote for himself. Politics with him, so far, has been a recreation. He has found in the associations of the assembled wis­dom and strength of his party much genuine pleasure, and he has made good use of his political positions in forwarding what he honestly believes to be cor­rect theories for governmental adminis­tration. He is an organizer of no mean ability, and a leader who can inspire con­fidence in his followers.

March 15, 1886, Mr. Norris married, taking to wife Miss Martha B. Toogood, a native of Manchester, Delaware county, and a daughter of Thomas Toogood, one of Manchester's earliest settlers, and for many years one of its worthiest and most highly esteemed citizens, being now deceased. A sketch of him will be found in its appropriate place in this volume. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Norris has resulted in the birth of two children, a son and a daughter, Carl Howard and Laura Marie.

Being of a social disposition and having a deep sense of his obligations to his fellowmen, Mr. Norris has from time to time connected himself with different benevolent orders until he is now a mem­ber of a number of these orders, in all of which he takes an active interest, and in which he stands deservedly high. He is a zealous Mason and has taken all the degrees in the York rite masonry up to and including that of Knight Templar. He is now the worshipful master of Man­chester Lodge, No. 165, A. F. and A. M.; he is past high priest of Olive Branch Chapter, No. 48, R. A. M., at Manchester; he is past captain general of Nazareth Commandery, No. 33, Knights Templar, at Manchester, and its present generalis­simo; he is a member of DeMolay Con­sistory, No. 1, at Lyons, Iowa, having taken all the degrees in the Scottish rite up to and including the thirty-second degree; and he is a member of El Kahir Temple, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, at Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He is also a member of Manchester Lodge, No. 149, Independent Order of Odd Fellows and of Hyperion Lodge, No. 186, Knights of Pythias, of Manchester.

In private life Mr. Norris is mentioned for his great kindness and for his regard for the rights and enjoyments of others, for his liberality and disinterestedness. He is earnest and active and never hesi­tates to perform his share of the work about him. The cast of his mind is prac­tical and he has the bearing of one de­voted to business; yet he rises with ease into the higher graces of life, and under his own roof and by his own fireside, where he receives from a faithful and affectionate wife that sympathy and companionship which is found nowhere but in a good wife, he realizes the best phases and the truest enjoyment of this world.

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