HISTORY OF WOOD COUNTY



   There is one municipal court in Wood County-that at Marshfield. Estab-
lished in 1891, it tries all criminal actions committed in the city below
state prison
offenses, and holds examination of persons accused of all other crimes and
all
offenses under the city charter and ordinances. The present judge of this
court,
R. E. Andrews, is serving his third two-year term, having served two terms
fol-
lowing his first election in 1902.
   The Seventh Judicial District from the time of its organization in 1854
up to
the present has had but four judges, namely George W. Cate, Gilbert L. Park,
Charles M. Webb and Byron B. Park, the last mentioned, who took office in
1911,
still serving. To enhance the interest of this chapter a biographical sketch
of each
will be here given.
   George W. Cate, first judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, was born
at the
town of Montpelier, Vermont, Sept. 17, 1824. and died March 7, 1905, at Stevens
Point, Wis. His ancestors were soldiers in the War of the Revolution and
the
War of 1812. He was educated in the common schools and in a local private
school,
and at the age of 17 became a teacher, which profession he followed during
the
winter months for several years. In 1840 he began the study of law in the
office
of Joseph A. Wing at Plainfield and after three years there completed his
studies
in the office of H. Lucius B. Peck, then a leading lawyer in central Vermont.
He
was admitted to the bar in September of 1845, and practiced one year in his
own
village. Finding the competition of the older and better established laywers
too
keen, he abandoned the attempt to build up a clientele, and came to Mineral
Point,
Wis., in the fall of 1846. Being without funds, he went to work cutting cord
wood
at five shillings a cord, and a little later, "I hired out," he
writes, "to Abraham
Brawley, a lumberman making his headquarters at a little hamlet called Stevens
Point."  He spent two years in the woods and mills, and on the river,
and in 1848
opened a law office at Plover, Wis. That year he seas made deputy postmaster
at Plover, deputy register of deeds, and deputy clerk of the board of supervisors.
In 1849 he was made district attorney and held the office for two terms.
During
this time he also served as register of deeds and city clerk, and several
times as
chairman of the county board of supervisors. In the fall of 1851 he was elected
to the Assembly, and was reelected the following year. In 1850 he formed
a part-
nership with the late Chauncey Abbot of Madison, under the name of Abbott
&
Cate, and in 1852 entered partnership with Luther Hanchett under the firm
name
of Cate & Hanchett. In April of 1854, at the age of 29, he was elected
Judge of
the Seventh Judicial Circuit. He was reelected to this office three times,
and re-
signed to take a seat in the Fourty-fourth Congress, having been elected
at the
general election in November, 1874. He served in this capacity one term,
and in
the summer of 1857 opened a legal office at Stevens Point. Then began his
career
as one of the greatest trial lawyers the state has produced. From 1877 until
his
practical retirement a year or two before his death he was constantly occupied
with the legal affairs of a large and wealthy clientele, drawn to him from
all over
central and northern Wisconsin. No lawyer in the state, it is safe to say,
had a
larger personal following. In 1886 he entered a partnership under the firm
name
of Cate, Jones & Sanborn, which was changed Jan. 1, 1896, to Cate, Sanborn,
Lamoreux & Park. A. W. Sanborn left the firm in 1900, and in 1902 Judge
Cate
also left to enter a partnership M ith his son-in-law, G. M. Dahl, in which
partner-



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