Montgomery Hunt Throop

Background

Throop was born on January 26, 1827 in Auburn, N. Y. He was the son of George B. Throop and Francis (Hunt).

Education

His education was acquired in Cazenovia Academy, in Geneva and Naples while his uncle Enos Thompson Throop was in the diplomatic service, and at Hobart College, which he left before graduation. He studied law in the office of his uncle Ward Hunt.

Career

He was admitted to the bar in 1848, and practised in Utica in partnership with Hunt until 1856, at which time he became a partner of Roscoe Conkling, who had been a fellow student in Auburn. In spite of temperamental and political differences between the two men this partnership lasted until 1862. Throop played the part of the office lawyer while Conkling presented the arguments orally in trial court. The former, however, frequently argued on appeal cases in which his partner had appeared in the lower court.

In 1864 Throop moved to New York City, where he continued his practice. In 1870 Throop was made chairman of a commission to revise the New York statutes. This task, of which he performed the major part, occupied seven years and determined the future direction of his interests; it was brought to completion by the publication, in 1877, of The Code of Civil Procedure of the State of New York, which superseded The New Revision of the Statutes of the State of New York: Code of Remedial Justice, issued in 1876. The rest of Throop's life was devoted to legal authorship and the editorship of codes and compilations of statutes and decisions. His chief publications in these fields were: A Treatise on the Validity of Verbal Agreements (1870), projected as two volumes, of which only one was published; various editions of The Code of Civil Procedure, with notes; The New York Justice's Manual (fourteen annual issues, 1880-93); the seventh edition (1882) of The Revised Statutes of the State of New York, frequently reprinted; Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, from 1884 to 1886 (2 vols. , 1887); and A Treatise on the Law Relating to Public Officers and Sureties in Official Bonds (1892).

Throop moved to Albany in 1880 and made his home there until his death. He was peculiarly fitted for his labor in the field of legal scholarship. He was an accomplished scholar in the field of medieval Latin and was widely read in history and belles-lettres. Throop's death was due to apoplexy.

Achievements

• Montgomery Hunt Throop was an American lawyer, who is remembered as amember of New York Codification Commission, 1870-1877 and the author of The Future: A Political Essay.

Works

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  • A Treatise on the Validity of Verbal Agreements, As Affected By the Legislative Enactments in England and the United States, Commonly Called the Statute of Frauds, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

    (The uncertainty and confusion, which, after the lapse of ...)

  • The New Revision of the Statutes of the State of New York. Report of the Commissioners, and Accompanying Bill, with an Appendix and an Index, Transmit

    ( The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and Inte...)

  • The code of remedial justice: Shall it be repealed or completed? : a communication to the judiciary committees of the Legislature of the state of New York.

    (The Making of the Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926 ...)

  • A Treatise on the Law Relating to Public Officers and Sureties in Official Bonds (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from A Treatise on the Law Relating to Public Off...)

  • The future: a political essay by Montgomery H. Throop

    (This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)

  • The New York Justice's Manual: Containing All the Laws of the State, Relating to the Official Tenure and Duties of a Justice of the Peace, and the ... Notes and an Appendix of Forms (1880)

    (Originally published in 1880. This volume from the Cornel...)

Politics

He appears to have had no political ambitions and never ran for public office, but he took a keen interest in the turbulent political controversies of his day. He was a stanch Democrat, rather of the type of Samuel Nelson or Jeremiah S. Black who found himself unable to justify what he deemed the excesses of the Republicans, but who desired the preservation of the Union and believed that that end might have been achieved by peaceful means.

In March 1864 he published a volume, The Future: A Political Essay, written late in the preceding year, giving his views on the war and reconstruction. It is a temperate but forceful attack upon what Throop regarded as the unconstitutional practices and policies of the Lincoln administration as well as the presidential and congressional plans for reconstruction then being shaped and discussed. He did not advocate the abandonment of the war but he protested vigorously against the use of coercive measures in the conquered sections of the South and urged that the existence of war does not suspend the ordinary guarantees of the Constitution. He advocated the calling at the close of the war of a national constitutional convention to adjust the governmental system to radically changed conditions, in part by devising a plan for eliminating the ruinous spoils system and by redrawing the line of demarcation between the powers of the federal and state governments so as to prevent the undue expansion of national power at state expense.

Personality

Throughout the greater part of his life he was almost totally deaf, but he was intellectually alert, a tireless worker, and a thorough linguist.

Connections

On June 22, 1854, he married Charlotte Williams Gridley of Utica. Two sons were born to them, of whom one died in boyhood.

Father:

George B. Throop

Mother:

Francis (Hunt) Throop

Spouse:

Charlotte Williams Gridley

References

• Memorial of the Honorable Montgomery H. Throop: Died, September 11th, 1892