The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
Lawyer; judge of the Allen County superior court, 1899–1900
On the record
William J. Vesey taught a winter term of school at seventeen, read law under Judge S. C. Coffinberry at Constantine, Michigan, and James S. Drake at LaGrange, and was admitted to the bar in 1878. He came to Fort Wayne that October and continued his studies in the office of Ninde & Ellison. In 1881 he formed the firm of Randall & Vesey with Perry A. Randall, which lasted until 1890; a partnership with Owen N. Heaton followed and ended when Heaton went on the Allen County superior court bench in 1902. Vesey then practiced as Vesey & Vesey with his brother Allen J., and his sons Dick M. Vesey (1910) and David S. Vesey (1914) later joined the firm. In October 1899 Governor Durbin appointed him to the superior court to fill the vacancy left by the death of Judge C. M. Dawson, and he served until the middle of November 1900; Griswold records that in October 1900 he was the first judge to sit on that bench in the new Allen County courthouse. His practice centered on commercial law, and he was attorney for the First and Hamilton National Bank, the Tri-State Loan & Trust Company, S. F. Bowser & Company, the Fort Wayne Rolling Mill Corporation, the Dudlo Manufacturing Company and Mossman, Yarnelle & Company. He married Maggie Studebaker, daughter of Judge David Studebaker of Decatur, on 25 July 1882; she died 8 April 1910. On 6 July 1917 he married Grace Waters.
Sources: Griswold, Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, vol. II (1917), Vesey sketch, read first-hand; the sketch’s long opening genealogy of the Vesey family is not reproduced. No second source reached for this profile.