Judge James E. Hawes
Judge James E. Hawes, Attorney-at-Law and occupying a prominent position among the legal lights of this county, was for a period of ten years, from February, 1879 to 1889, Judge of the court of common pleas. He possesses talents of no mean order, is a close student and an extensive reader and thoroughly experienced in the intricacies of his profession. He was Prosecuting Attorney from 1869 to 1871, and when a young man was for some time the City Solicitor. He has just passed the fifty-second year of his age, having been born February 18, 1838, and is a native of Mt. Holly, Warren County, this State.
The Judge is the representative of an excellent family, being the son of Edmund and Huldah (James) Hawes. Edmund Hawes was born in Connecticut whence he emigrated to Ohio when a youth of nineteen years, with his parents, and thereafter spent the greater part of his life in Warren County engaged as a physician and surgeon. He died, however, in this county in 1849. The wife and mother died in November, 1888, aged seventy-nine years; their family consisted of four children. James E., in his boyhood took kindly to his books at an early age gave indications of rare intellectual ability. When sufficiently prepared he entered Antioch College and upon emerging from this institution repaired to Ann Arbor, Mich., and entered the law department of Michigan University from which he was duly graduated and shortly afterward in 1863, was admitted to the bar. He commenced the practice of his profession in Xenia, but his plans, like those of many others, suffered an interruption by the vicissitudes of war, which was then in progress, and that same year he became connected with the Quartermaster’s department at Nashville, with which he remained during that and the following year. He established himself as a resident of Xenia, in 1865, and has been connected with many of the important cases being tried in the courts of this county and district.
On the 8th of February, 1871, Judge Hawes was united in marriage with Miss Amanda, daughter of James Welch, then a resident of Xenia and one of the pioneer settlers of this county. Mrs. Hawes was born May 22, 1848, near Yellow Springs, this county. She received careful parental training and a good education in the common schools. There have been born of this union two children—Winifred and Paul, to whom their father proposes giving the best advantages in his power. The family residence is pleasantly located on King Street, and Judge Hawes and his estimable wife occupy no secondary position in the social world.
From Portrait and Biographical Album of Clark and Greene Counties, Chapman Bros., Chicago, published 1890