Draft:Lucien F. Burpee

Lucien F. Burpee (October 12, 1855 – May 9, 1924) was a justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court from 1921 until his death in 1924.

Born in Rockville, Connecticut, to Colonel Thomas F. Burpee and Adeline M. (Harwood) Burpee.

Connecticut Reports, volume 101, pages 753 - 757

prepared for college in the public schools at Rockville, and was graduated from Yale College, with honors, in the class of 1879.

After studying law at the Yale Law School and at Hamilton College, he began the practice of law at Waterbury in 1881 with Hon. Stephen W. Kellogg, and later entered into a partnership with the latter and his son, John P. Kellogg, under the firm name of Kellogg, Burpee and Kellogg, which was continued until 1889. He served as Prosecuting Attorney of the City Court of Waterbury until 1890, when he became Corporation Counsel for that City, a position which he held until 1896; from 1897 he was judge of its City Court, until 1909, when he was appointed a judge of the Superior Court, a position he held until April, 1921, when he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Errors, and remained in that office to the time of his decease.

For many years he served in the National Guard of this State, passing from Second Lieutenant through all grades to that of Colonel of the Second Regiment.

At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, he recruited his regiment to the full legal maximum and tendered its services to the Governor of this State on April 25th, 1898, “for any time and any place.” Not being called into action immediately, he obtained a leave of absence from the State military authorities, and accepted a commission from President McKinley as Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Volunteer Army. He served throughout the campaign at Porto Rico on the staffs of Major General Nelson A. Miles, commanding the United States Army, and Major General James H. Wilson, commanding the First Division, First Army Corps. In official dispatches to the Government, he received honorable mention for distinguished service.

On four occasions, under appointments from Connecticut Governors, he took a leading part in revising the military laws and regulations of this State.

In March, 1917, he was requested by Governor Holcomb to organize troops for State defense, the National Guard having been called into Federal service in the World War, and was appointed Chairman of the Military Emergency Board, provided for by an Act of the Legislature enacted during that month. Under his leadership as Major General of the Home Guard, nearly 20,000 men were recruited for that service, about one half of whom were placed on the active list and promptly armed, uniformed and equipped for service. During a period of three years, he directed this work, in addition to performing his duties as a judge of the Superior Court.

At Memorial Services for him held October 7th, 1924, in the Supreme Court room, in Hartford, ex-Governor Holcomb spoke of Justice Burpee as follows: “During July and August, known as the vacation months, he gave one week to each of the six military districts of the Home Guard of the State for drill and instruction at the Niantic Military Camp Grounds, with the result that during the World War this State had the finest body of citizen soldiers of any State, and was a model for other States. General Burpee received the following communication: ‘Compliments of American Defense Society to General Lucien F. Burpee, for his effective work in safe-guarding life and property in Connecticut.’ The credit of developing and perfecting the Home Guard of Connecticut belongs to Lucien F. Burpee. I have no doubt but that the physical strain he was under materially shortened his life. The people of this State may never fully realize the full extent of their obligation to General Burpee, and it is certain the State can never repay the debt it owes him. He is worthy of all the honor we can pay to his memory as a competent and faithful judge and as a patriotic American citizen.”

The address of Mr. Chief Justice Wheeler on the same occasion gives such a vivid portrait of his colleague and such a true estimate of his character and influence, that with his permission it may appropriately conclude this notice:

“Justice Burpee was endowed with a strong mentality, which had been informed, equipped and trained by the schools and by much reading of the books; his education in the school of life had been conspicuously wide through a most varied practice in the law and an association with public affairs and public offices of responsibility and authority, criminal as well as civil; he was familiar with Connecticut institutions, customs, laws and history, and he understood the New England people, their standards and their ideals. He was a dignified, well poised, forcible and self-reliant man, conscious of his power, yet justifying it in the sight of man by the deed done or the word spoken. His thought was clear, vigorous and ready and his spoken word direct, much to the point and well expressed.

“A few men are peculiarly fitted for a definite vocation. Justice Burpee was among these few. The law was his natural vocation. He had a legal mind. As a practitioner we recall, as among the best of his day, his presentation of the evidence in a cause. The chaff was avoided, the strong points featured and no time wasted over the immaterial. He knew his case and had weighed it in the balance of his discriminating judgment. His sense of proportion gave to the trier, as he saw it, the essence of the case. He knew what he was after in his examinations, he never groped nor unduly protracted, and when he was through he stopped. In the summing up he dealt with the pregnant matter of the case; what his sober and calculated reason rejected he did not impose upon court or jury. A multitude of incidental fact and inconsequent detail did not fog his mind, or turn him from his marked out course. You could not listen to him without seeing that he understood human motives and grasped the truth of the situations. In his argument order reigned, logic prevailed and reason forcible and correct in every topic touched; its power lay in the truth of the position taken, in the strength and manner of the presentation and in the clarity of the expression. It was inevitable that he should become the leader of the Waterbury bar. His position in the profession made him a directing force in the development of the large industrial organizations and governmental institutions of the fast growing and important community in which he lived. He had seen human nature revealed; its vices and its passions; its virtues and its nobleness. All these the lawyer of experience comes in contact with, perhaps more closely than any other man; for him the disguise is stripped off. It was in such a training school that Justice Burpee became a finished and symmetrical lawyer and fitted for service in our higher courts.

“The appreciation of the responsibility of the judicial office possessed him, lent earnestness to his conviction, solicitude as to his action, and made it his highest ambition and constant purpose to faithfully discharge its duties, uncaring circumstance and loving justice.

“As a trial judge he met the Socratic test—‘He heard courteously, he answered wisely, he considered soberly and decided impartially.’ He never tried to carry water on both shoulders. The judicial office is no place for those of timid decision or those of compromising mind, and Justice Burpee belonged to neither of these classes. He was a trial judge of masterful will and unyielding conviction when his judgment had become convinced and settled, but underlying each was his most earnest desire to reach a right conclusion, and then to enforce it.

“When he came to this court there was universal recognition of the fitness of his promotion. All of the profession knew that he had an accurate knowledge of the underlying principles of the law and the legal grasp to apply them, capacity for sound and comprehensive reasoning, an analytical mind, ripe judgment, courage unflinching, abundant scholarship and culture, and real intellectuality, and the discipline of many years of trial court work, which he proved his metal and demonstrated his quality. In this court he measured fully up to the requirements of his high position, and throughout sustained his place. His service though brief has left behind a body of opinions which will reveal to their readers in the long future that Justice Burpee possessed the judicial qualities which make the true judge of the court of last resort.

“Underwood Typewriter Co. v. Hartford involved a question of taxation of very large interest to the municipalities of the State and their people, and its decision is an illustration of the treatment of a public question in a broad way with the emphasis placed upon the public welfare. Whitehill v. Halbing construes our statute concerning the revocation of wills, while Bissell v. Butterworth construes the statute creating a trust fund for the benefit of those who saw service in the World War, and both present probably as capable arguments as could have been made upon these subjects. Long a prosecutor and trier of criminal causes, he was insistent upon an accused having accorded him the fundamental rights guaranteed him by our law. In State v. Ferrone, Justice Burpee strongly upholds the right of an accused to be accorded a fair trial under the rules of the law. These opinions will suffice to show the strength of argument, the care in presentation, the soundness of the reasoning, the clarity in the expression and the elegance in the style, though this was never suffered to cloud or dull the thought or reasoning. His use of words was exceptional, they fitted exactly the place in which they were put.

“ In the disposition of the many intricate and important problems discussed in the conference room, Justice Burpee was a very helpful influence. The disagreements in view, sharp as they sometimes were, arose from the scrupulous longing of the judges to reach just results. Always the dominant purpose of Justice Burpee, as well as his associates, has been, so far as was reasonably possible, to reconcile views and give to the utterance of the court the strength which comes from unity. When the final word had been spoken, and the decision adverse to his views reached, he accepted the result with the best of grace.

“Our association was cordial and friendly. We respected his judgment, and esteemed him as a helpful associate, and were bound to him in genuine attachment. Service upon the bench became a vital part of the religion of his life. To him it meant as it did to Webster, who once said, ‘ Whoever labors upon this edifice with usefulness and distinction, whoever clears its foundations, strengthens its pillars, adorns its entablatures, or contributes to raise its august dome still higher in the skies, connects himself in name and fame and character with that which is, and must be, as durable as the frame work of human society.'

“Some lawyers and some judges are that and nought else. The great stream of life passes by them save as their profession touches it; not so with Justice Burpee. His love and reverence for his country and her institutions was a supreme passion of his nature. He was intensely patriotic. The sword of his gallant father who fell at Cold Harbor quickened his interest in all things military. He served in his State’s troops, he helped make her military laws. When the Spanish War came and he could not get his regiment accepted ‘for any time, in any place,’ he promptly severed the ties of home and gave up a lucrative practice and his high hopes of honorable preferment to serve on the staffs of General Miles and General Wilson. His country’s war must be his war. The World War set his patriotism aflame. Then and after he knew better ‘what liberty and justice, what honesty and compassion, what morality and right really were.’ He became the trusted confidant and military adviser of our war Governor Marcus H. Holcomb. He originated and organized the State Guard and it had much to do in preserving the morale and good order of the people of our State throughout the war. Justice Burpee by inheritance, experience and natural aptitude was quite fit to play the great part he did in the World War. By day and by night he was on military duty, carrying its duties on with conspicuous success and during all of that time never permitting his services as a Superior Court judge to lag. His life is a lesson in patriotism for the living, and it should be held up to those who come after as worthy of emulation.

“When dread disease seized upon him and he knew what he faced, he met his fate and 'fronted death’ with ‘unquailing eye.’ He lived and died a brave man, a devoted lover of his country and his State, a man who regarded service to the State as of the highest careers of men, and a judge who had served his generation usefully, acceptably and honorably.”

Justice Burpee was survived by his wife, Irene A. Fitch, three children, Lida Ellsworth, Helen Silleck and Thomas F. Burpee, and eight grandchildren, John Stoughton Ellsworth Jr., Thomas Burpee Ellsworth, Lida Burpee Ellsworth, Elaine Ellsworth, Esther Silleck, Hope Silleck, Thomas Burpee and Mary Margaret Burpee.

Burpee died at his home, in West Hartford, at the age of 68.

References

Category:1855 births Category:1924 deaths Category:Justices of the Connecticut Supreme Court

This open draft remains in progress as of July 5, 2023.