Have Historians Ignored The Real Founder Of Marquette University? The Legacy Of Dr. W. J. Cronyn

Dr.  William Jerome Cronyn is a forgotten figure in the history of Marquette University.  Neither Professor Jablonsky nor Father Hamilton mentions him in their histories of the university.  However, the case can be made that it was Dr. Cronyn, a professor at the Milwaukee Medical College and a former student at the Milwaukee Law School, who first publicly advanced the idea of converting Marquette College into a full-fledged university containing both a medical school and a law school.

During the early years of the twentieth century, the independent Milwaukee Law School celebrated the end of each academic year with a banquet.  The featured speaker at the June 1906 banquet was Dr. Cronyn.  According to a story in the June 28, 1906, Stevens Point Daily Journal, in his remarks at the dinner, Cronyn “suggested the organization of a ‘Milwaukee University’ to be brought about through the consolidation of the Milwaukee College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Milwaukee Medical college, Marquette college and the Milwaukee Law school.”  Such a consolidation, would, Cronyn maintained, be “along the line of development for a Greater Milwaukee.”  According to the Daily Journal, which was covering the address primarily because Cronyn’s wife was a member of the prominent Gate family of Stevens Point, Cronyn’s  remarks “were received with enthusiastic applause.”

The law school banquet was not the first time that Cronyn had advanced the idea of the merger of Marquette College with Milwaukee’s independent professional schools.

On June 1, he had also been the after dinner speaker at the commencement banquet of the Milwaukee Medical College, and during his remarks there, he called for the union of the Medical College with the city’s Catholic college.  The proposal was reportedly met with great applause in this venue as well.

Cronyn’s remarks at the annual dinner of the Milwaukee Law School came exactly one week after Marquette College had celebrated its “Silver Jubilee.”  The three-day anniversary event had honored the creation of Marquette in 1881 and its subsequent accomplishments, but there was apparently no mention at the event of any plans to expand the college into a university.  At that point, the primary emphasis was on the building of a new college structure (which turned out to be Johnston Hall).

In his Milwaukee’s Jesuit University: Marquette, 1881-1991 (2007), Professor Thomas Jablonsky sets out the sequence by which Marquette College became Marquette University.  In the spring of 1906, a few months before Cronyn’s call for a new “Milwaukee University,” Dr. William H. Earles, president and owner of the Milwaukee Medical College, whose faculty included Dr. Cronyn, met with Marquette College president Alexander Burrows, S. J., to discuss the possibility of some form of collaboration between the two institutions.  Burrows appeared uninterested at the time, and nothing came directly from this meeting.

However, by early 1907, President Burrows attitude had changed, possibly because of the positive reaction to Cronyn’s proposals.  In May, the college and the medical school agreed to affiliate under the name of Marquette University.

Once the medical school merger was complete discussions began between Marquette and the Milwaukee Law School.  It initially looked like this second merger might occur in time for the 1907-08 academic year, but disagreement over the price that Marquette would pay for the law school’s assets (which were largely intangible) delayed the merger until the spring of 1908.  Before the 1908 academic year began, Marquette also purchased the small Milwaukee University Law School.

While Cronyn ,of course, cannot be said to be solely responsible for the mergers that led to the creation of Marquette University, his remarks at the two June 1906 banquets and the developments that followed suggest that he played an important part in the school’s transition from college to university, and a part that has rarely been acknowledged.

Cronyn’s personal story is a fascinating one, separate and apart from his connection to Marquette.  He was born in Ontario, Canada on November 15, 1849, and educated in Roman Catholic schools.  He emigrated to the United States in 1864 at age 15 to enlist in the 30th Michigan Infantry in which he served until the end of the Civil War.  After the war he studied medicine in upstate New York, receiving his medical degree in 1870 from the University of Buffalo.  He became a United States citizen and practiced medicine in Chautauqua County, New York until 1893, except for the years 1873 to 1876 when he served as a physician in the United States Navy.  He moved to Milwaukee in the summer of 1893, after marrying Levara C. Cate, the daughter of George W. Cate, a prominent Wisconsin judge.

In addition to his work as a physician and medical educator, Cronyn was very active in the Grand Army of the Republic and served in the Wisconsin National Guard as a surgeon and later as a military adviser to the governor of Wisconsin.  He also found time to study law at the Milwaukee Law School, and in 1903, he joined the faculty of the Milwaukee Medical College, teaching classes on medical jurisprudence, forensic medicine, military hygiene, and medical ethics.  He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Boy Scouts in the Milwaukee area and a 32nd degree Mason.  He was also a constant presence at military reunions and ceremonies and was the last Civil War veteran to serve as an active member of the Wisconsin National Guard.

Cronyn’s role in the merger of the Milwaukee Law School into Marquette University may also explain the decision to award him an honorary bachelor of laws degree at the 1908 Marquette commencement, the first after the announcement of the acquisition of the Milwaukee Law School by Marquette.  At the 1908 commencement, apparently as part of the merger agreement, all former students of the Milwaukee Law School who had been admitted to the Wisconsin bar were awarded Marquette law degrees.  (The Milwaukee Law School itself had had no degree-granting authority, but bar admission in that era did not require graduation from a law school.)

In the commencement program, Cronyn was not listed with those receiving a regular law degree—he may not have been eligible as there is no evidence that he ever attempted to practice law or secured admission to the bar—but his name appeared on the more celebrated list of those receiving honorary degrees.

Cronyn was also listed as a member of the original Marquette law faculty in 1908-09.  The only course he taught at the law school was Medical Jurisprudence, a course described in the law school bulletin as embracing “the rights, duties and responsibilities growing out of the relation of the physician to his patient and the community, and includes the subject of expert testimony in medico-legal cases.”  Medical Jurisprudence was an elective course for senior (third year) law students.  Under the original law school curriculum there were four elective courses, of which students in their final year had to take at least one, but not more than two.

Apparently Medical Jurisprudence was not a popular elective and after a couple of years, the course was reduced to single lecture delivered annually by Cronyn.  By 1915, Cronyn’s name no longer appeared in the law school catalog, but he continued to teach at the Marquette Medical School until just before his death on Feb. 23, 1918 in Milwaukee.

Cronyn’s enthusiasm for the new Marquette University was not limited to the law and medical colleges.  He was, for example, the speaker at the 1908 Marquette football banquet.  During his remarks, he not only praised the efforts of the school’s gridiron contingent (which included players from the law and medical schools), but he also called for the new university to enter a team in the crew competitions on the Hudson River in New York.  According to a report in the December 6, 1908 New York Times Cronyn pledged to personally raise the necessary money if the University would take up “aquatic” sports.

William George Bruce’s History of Milwaukee, City and County (1922) is one of the few published works to credit Cronyn with a central role in the creation of Marquette University.  The book also contains a magnificent photograph of Dr. Cronyn decked out in his Wisconsin military regalia.  It would be a fitting tribute to the law school’s forgotten “founder” to have a copy of that photograph displayed in Eckstein Hall.

Continue ReadingHave Historians Ignored The Real Founder Of Marquette University? The Legacy Of Dr. W. J. Cronyn

Horace Scurry: Our First African-American Law Student

Horace S. Scurry was one of many fascinating individuals who passed through the Milwaukee Law School between the time of its founding in the early 1890’s and its merger with Marquette University in 1908.  He appears to have been the first African-American to join the ranks of that institution’s students.

Details of Scurry’s life are meager.  He was born in 1865 in Delaware, Ohio, and first arrived in Milwaukee in 1882 at age 17.  He attended school in Milwaukee and then returned to Ohio, where he enrolled in Ohio Wesleyan College (which was in his hometown of Delaware).  The college catalog listed him as a Milwaukee resident, and he apparently entered college with the intention of becoming a teacher. In 1900, he was working at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, as the steward of the teachers’ house and, reportedly, as a teacher.

He returned to Milwaukee at some point and enrolled in the Milwaukee Law School.

Although he studied law, he does not appear to have been admitted to the bar.  The Milwaukee Law School was designed to prepare students for admission to the Wisconsin bar and did not award degrees of its own.  However, in 1908, following the merger, Marquette University awarded a law degree to any former student of the Milwaukee Law School who had been admitted to the Wisconsin bar.  Scurry’s name does not appear on the list of degree recipients, although it is possible that he was admitted but did not bother to apply for the Marquette degree.

In any event, Scurry’s future was in neither education nor law, but in religion.  In the early twentieth century (if not sooner), he became an ordained Baptist minister. He was affiliated with the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Milwaukee (a black Baptist church) and with the Wisconsin State Baptist Convention.  After his entry into the ranks of the clergy, he retained an interest in politics and public affairs.  The archives of the American Socialist Party contain a letter written to Scurry by Norman Thomas, the party’s perennial presidential candidate.

In 1935, Scurry, aged 70 and retired from the ministry, was awarded a monthly old-age pension of $30 from the Milwaukee county court.  A story in the December 17, 1935, edition of the Milwaukee Journal reported the award of the pension by County Judge John C. Karel and mentioned Scurry’s prior affiliation with the Milwaukee Law School.  Scurry died on June 6, 1943, still affiliated with the Mt. Zion Baptist Church.

Continue ReadingHorace Scurry: Our First African-American Law Student

Marquette University Law School in 1939

In 1938, Jim Ghiardi transferred to Marquette University after his sophomore year at Northern State College (now Northern Michigan University) in Marquette, Michigan.  A year later, Jim enrolled in the Marquette University Law School under a program that allowed Marquette students to count their first year of law school as the final year of their undergraduate education.  Jim received his Ph.B. degree in 1940 and his law degree in 1942. The following is a description of the law school at the time of his initial enrollment in the fall of 1939.

The Law School

By 1939, Marquette University Law School had been training lawyers in Milwaukee for more than 45 years, and the school had been officially part of Marquette University since 1908.  Since 1924, all law school classes had been taught at the Law School Building (now known as Sensenbrenner Hall) which replaced an earlier building on the same site.

In 1939, the law school boasted an enrollment of 248 students and a faculty of ten, plus four “special lecturers” and law librarian Agnes Kendergan.  In addition, the Rev. Joseph A. Ormsby, S. J., served as the Regent of the Law School. Although the law school had originally offered instruction primarily in the evening, the evening division was terminated in 1924, and the last evening class was offered in 1927.

As an institution, Marquette University Law School was squarely in the mainstream of American legal education.  The school had been admitted to the Association of American Law Schools in 1912, and in 1925, shortly after the American Bar Association began to accredit law schools, it won ABA accreditation.  Historically, Marquette Law School graduates were required to take the Wisconsin bar examination to practice law in the state, but in 1933, after a long and sometimes bitter contest with the University of Wisconsin, the “diploma privilege” was extended to Marquette graduates.

Admission and Degrees

To secure admission to the law school, applicants had to be 18 years of age and must have completed three years of college.  There is no evidence that anyone who met these qualifications was turned down in 1939, but this was true for virtually every American law school before the Second World War.

Marquette students in 1939 had the option of pursuing two different types of law degrees—the bachelor of laws and the juris doctor.   Marquette was one of several American law schools that used this distinction to provide recognition for students who entered law school with college degrees (which were required only at a handful of schools) and who performed extremely well while in law school.  This two law degree program had been adopted at Marquette during the 1925-26 academic year.

The standard law degree was the bachelor of laws (LL.B.), which was the equivalent of today’s J.D. degree.  To earn this degree students had to complete 85 hours of law courses, including 4 hours of Office Practice and 4 hours of Moot Court, with an average grade of 77.  (In 1939, the law school was in the process of changing its grading system.  The school had previously used the traditional letter system, but beginning with the class that entered in 1938, students were graded on a numerical basis ranging from 60 to 100.  Ninety-three or better was considered an A, and cumulative averages of 71 and 74 were required to continue after the first and second years, respectively.)

The second degree was the juris doctor, or J.D., degree.  For it, students were required to have entered law school with an undergraduate degree, to complete the requirements for the LL.B. with an average grade of 88 (which was in the middle of the B range), and to prepare and submit an acceptable thesis by May 1 of their final year.  The thesis, if accepted, became “the property of the School and at the direction of the Dean [could] be published.”  By 1940, the J.D. was clearly passing out of fashion among Marquette law students.  Although the degree was awarded to 67 students between 1926 and 1937, no one earned the degree in 1938, and the last two recipients received the degree in 1939.  The J.D. degree remained on the books for several more years but was eventually discontinued sometime between 1942 and 1945.

The Academic Calendar

In 1939, the academic year started and ended much later than it does today.  Law School classes did not begin until September 26, and the first semester examinations did not end until February 2, 1940.  The second semester began on February 6 with graduation on June 12.

Tuition for the regular academic year was $230 — although those who opted for payment on the installment plan had to pay an additional four dollars — and board and lodging could be found in the vicinity of the law school for an estimated $7.50 per week.  Third year students who were also candidates for the law degree had to pay an additional $12.50 diploma fee.

The Student Body in 1939

The 248 students enrolled at the law school during the 1939-40 academic year included 76 Seniors (third-year students), 72 Juniors, 97 Freshmen, and 3 Special Students.  (Special students were enrolled in classes but were not candidates for degrees.)

All 97 students in the 1939 freshman class were male, although this was something of an aberration as there were two women in the senior class and three in the junior.

Eighty-seven of the 97 freshmen students were from Wisconsin, and 58 were from Milwaukee proper.   Nine of the 10 out-of-state students were from the Midwest, including Jim Ghiardi, who was from Negaunee, Michigan.  The only student with a hometown outside the Midwest was Jim’s future faculty colleague Ray Aiken, whose parents lived in Jacksonville, Florida.  Only 18 members of the class were listed as having earned undergraduate degrees prior to beginning law school, although several, like Jim, earned their bachelor’s degree at the end of their first year of law school.

The Law School Curriculum 

The University Bulletin for 1939-40 described the law school’s method of instruction as the “case method,” which it asserted “inculcates habits of accurate reasoning.”  However, the same document also emphasized that the faculty neglected “neither the purely scientific nor the practical element of legal education” and noted that special attention was given to Wisconsin law.

To earn the law degree students had to pass 85 credit hours of courses, most of which were required.  All of the first-year classes—which included four year-long courses and five that lasted one semester—were required and counted for 34 of the 85 credit hours.  Each class was taught in a single section.

Students in the fall of 1939 had Dean Francis X. Swietlik for Contracts, Professor Otto Reis for Torts and for Agency, Prof. J. Walter McKenna for Criminal Law and Procedure, Prof. Francis A. Darnieder for Introduction to Law, Prof. Willis E. Lang for Personal Property, and the Rev. Joseph A. Ormsby, S.J., for Natural Law and Jurisprudence.  In the spring, Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law and Procedure, and Natural Law and Jurisprudence continued with the same instructors, but Lang’s Personal Property course was replaced by one on Domestic Relations (also taught by Lang).  The final spring semester course was Domestic Relations taught by Prof. Carl Zollman.  All of the professors, except for Rev. Ormsby, were full-time law professors.  The first-year curriculum is set out below:

Semester 1

Contracts (3 hrs)

Torts (3 hrs.)

Criminal Law and Procedure (2 hrs.)

Natural Law and Jurisprudence (2 hrs.)

Introduction to Law (3 hrs.)

Personal Property (2 hrs.)

Agency (2 hrs.)

Semester 2

Contracts (3 hrs.)

Torts (3 hrs.)

Criminal Law and Procedure (2 hrs.)

Natural Law and Jurisprudence (2 hrs.)

Domestic Relations (3 hrs.)

Sales (2 hrs.)

Eleven additional courses—eight of which were year-long courses—were mandated for Second and Third Year students, for a total of 42 credit hours.  Altogether, the required courses counted for 74 of the 85 credit hours necessary for the degree.  The remaining hours could be obtaining by choosing among 12 elective courses.  The 1939-40 upper level curriculum is set out below:

Upper Level Required Courses

Bills and Notes

Real Property (2 sem.)

Constitutional Law (2 sem.)

Trusts

Equity (2 sem.)

Wills and Probate (2 sem.)

Evidence (2 sem.)

Office Practice (2 sem.)

Legal Ethics

Moot Court (2 sem.)

Business Associations (2 sem.)

Elective Courses

Administrative Law

Future Interests

Code Pleading (2 sem.)

Insurance

Code Practice (2 sem.)

*Municipal Corporations

*Conflict of Laws

Quasi-Contracts

Creditors’ Rights

Security (Suretyship) (2 sem.)

Federal Jurisdiction

Taxation

* Offered every other year.  Note:  Code Pleading and Code Practice became required courses in 1940-41.

The Faculty 

The law faculty in 1939 consisted of the six full-time professors mentioned above (including Dean Swietlik) and four part-time instructors:  Rev. Ormsby, who also taught in the Philosophy Department, Thomas P. Whelan, who was also an instructor in the English Department, and Milwaukee lawyers E. Harold Hallows and Carl B. Rix.  (Hallows was a future chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Rix, a future president of the American Bar Association.)  All but Ormsby were law school graduates who had spent time practicing law in Milwaukee.

The University Bulletin described the members of the law faculty in 1939 as “men who not only take high rank at the bar, but who have been trained in the best universities and law schools of the country.  Such men possess not only the wide empirical knowledge of the practical lawyer in a large city, but also the broad, comprehensive basis of theory and method which is indispensable to the successful teacher.”

Several of the full-time faculty members carried extraordinarily heavy course loads, at least by modern standards.  Swietlik, who had been dean since 1935, taught seven required courses for a total of 15 credit hours.   The real workhorse of the faculty in 1939-40, however, was J. Walter McKenna who taught ten courses (four of which were required).  Francis Darnieder and Willis Lang each taught seven courses; Otto Reis taught five; and Carl Zollman, the best known scholar on the faculty, taught only four.

The part-time faculty members carried much lighter loads.  E. Harold Hallows taught three classes and Rev. Ormsby taught two.  Carl B. Rix taught only a single course, but it was the course devoted to future interests and the Rule Against Perpetuities.  Francis Whalen was listed in the 1939 catalog as a law professor but actually taught no courses that year.

Student Life

The only law school-specific activity listed in the Law School Announcement was the Marquette Law Review.  However, law students were encouraged to take active interest in the University Band, the University Choir, the University Chorus, the University Symphony Orchestra, intramural sports, and the various social, dramatic, literary, debating, and religious organizations.  In a report to University President Raphael McCarthy, S. J., in 1939, Dean Swietlik noted that the law school was concerned about the social life of its students and thus regularly sponsored “smokers,” annual dances including the Barristers Ball, and an end-of-the-year banquet for the law students, the faculty, the Milwaukee bar, and the Wisconsin judiciary.

Legal fraternities also played an important role in the social life of the law school.  Fraternities in 1939 included Delta Theta Phi, which had its own building, Phi Delta Phi, and Tau Epsilon Rho, a fraternity for Jewish law students.

According to the University yearbook, the Hilltop, “extracurricular activities [were] prominent in the law school,” and students were encouraged to participate “in organized religious and social movements for the common welfare of their fellows.”  While the law school acknowledged the importance of “the development of the social side of the student’s character,” its official publication cautioned: “No student activity is allowed to interfere with study.”

The Subsequent Law School Experiences of the Class of 1942 

In spite of the reportedly grueling nature of the first year of law school at Marquette, ninety percent (88 of the 97) freshmen students in 1939-40 returned for their second year in the fall of 1940.  A similar percentage of second-year students (79 of 88) returned for the third year of law school in 1941.

It was during a three-day break for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception during the fall semester of 1941 that Marquette law students learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  The likelihood of military call ups prompted Marquette to accelerate its Spring 1942 schedule, and in May, 69 members of the class received law degrees.  (Two of the 69 had actually finished even earlier so that they could enter military service.)

The law school awards announced at the 1942 Commencement were dominated by future Marquette law professors Ray Aiken, who received the award for the highest three-year grade average, and Jim Ghiardi, who received the award for the best performance during the third year of law school.

Sources:  Miscellaneous files, Marquette University Archives; Francis X. Swietlik, “History of Marquette University Law School” (unpublished manuscript, 1939); Marquette University Bulletin: Announcement of the Law School for the Session 1939-40; 1940-41; 1941-42; 1942-43; Interview with Prof. James A. Ghiardi, May 2007.  This essay was originally written for the 2007 program honoring Jim Ghiardi’s 61 years on the Marquette Law School faculty.

Continue ReadingMarquette University Law School in 1939