Every year I try to find an appropriate poem to use in Bill West's 7th annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge. I wanted my poem to have something to do with history or was written by an ancestor or family member. The easiest way to find information is to do a search by doing a google search. I simply typed in the search bar, "Poem" and "Fitch Poole," bingo twice. The first thing that caught my eye, was an article in Industrial Chicago: The Bench and Bar book about Charles Clarence Poole, my great-grandfather. The second piece of luck was finding a poem, to be posted Wednesday.
Below is the article google pushed in front of me, with the search words in red. The nicest surprise was seeing a photo and autograph of my great-grandfather. I hadn't seen it before!
Industrial Chicago: The Bench and Bar, Vol. VI
Chicago : The Goodspeed Publishing Company, 1896
pg. 210
"C. CLARENCE POOLE. Some details in the life and antecedents of this prominent patent attorney will be welcomed by all who have a real interest in the history of the bench and bar of Chicago. This city, the seat of many important manufactures, the center of large publishing interests, and in whose courts many celebrated cases arising from questions of ownership or violation of patents, trademarks and copyrights have been tried, has assumed an importance in such litigation second to that of no other manufacturing and commercial center in the country. Here there has grown up a class of patent lawyers as able as any in the world, one of the most reliable and most successful of whom is the gentleman to whose career these paragraphs are devoted.
pg. 211
Of Puritan lineage, Mr. Poole is a son of Charles Henry and Mary A. (Daniels) Poole and was born at Benicia, Cal., November 27, 1856. His father, a civil engineer by profession, was at the time in the service of the United States Government at that point. His mother was the daughter of Stephen Daniels, Esq., of Salem, Mass.
The founder of the family in America was John Poole of Reading, Mass., who came to the Massachusetts colony in 1632, was one of the first settlers of Cambridge, and was later granted land at Reading, and became one of the principal citizens of that place.
Mr. Poole is a lineal descendant of Governor Dudley and Governor Bradstreet of the Massachusetts Colony, and is a descendant also of Manasseh Cutler of Hamilton, Mass., a scholar and statesman, who graduated at Yale College, studied law and was admitted to the bar; studied, also, medicine and divinity; was a chaplain in the American Army and a noted patriot in the Revolution; was a long pastor of the church at Hamilton; achieved distinction by researches in botany and other scientific investigations; was chosen a director of the Ohio Company in 1787 and was the leading spirit in opening the Northwest Territory to settlement and the planting of the first colony in Ohio; was largely instrumental in securing the passage of the 'Ordinance of 1787,' by which slavery was excluded from the Northwest Territory, and was a member of Congress from Massachusetts. The family from which Mr. Poole comes has, in nearly all its branches and all generations, been noted for its scholarly tastes. Fitch Poole who was known as the 'Danvers Poet,' was his uncle, and Dr. William Frederick Poole, the distinguished librarian, author of 'Poole's Index,' and authority on New England history, and until his recent lamented death librarian of the Newberry Library in this city, was his cousin.
Mr. Poole early displayed a talent for mechanical studies, which he has since utilized in the practice of patent law, a department of legal work for which his abilities especially quality him. His early studies were in the schools of Washington, D. D., and later he was fitted for the practice of civil engineering by studies under private instructors, and in 1874 and 1875 served as assistant engineer in surveys carried on by the Engineer Department of the army. Among the records of the War Department are a set of maps and plans for a projected canal from Cumberland, Md., to Pittsburg, Pa., which were made by Mr. Poole from notes taken in the field before he was nineteen years old. Mr. Poole, also, by private instruction fitted himself for entering the higher classes of one of the principal Eastern universities, with a view of attending the same for a short time and taking a degree, but not being able to carry out this project, and intending to devote his attention to patent law, he entered the law school of the Columbian University at Washington, where he was graduated in 1882, taking a prize for an essay on 'Trademarks' at his graduation. In the fall of that year he came to Chicago, which he deemed to be a good field for the particular practice upon which he had determined to enter. He was first associated Melville F. Dayton, well known to the legal fraternity as a mechanical expert in court cases involving mechanical questions, in practice before the United States Patent Office, and later, also, in legal work, with Taylor E. Brown.
Mr. Poole, during his practice of patent law, has acquired a high reputation for skill and ability, both in the work of procuring patents and in the conduct of patent litigation, and he has been employed as counsel in many important cases both in the Patent Office and in the courts. His field of effort has not been confined to Chicago, but he has been called upon to represent important interests in many suits brought in other parts of the country.
Mr. Poole married, in 1884, at Chicago, Anne Poole, daughter of the late Dr. William Frederick Poole, librarian of the Newberry Library, and since his marriage has lived at Evanston.
pg. 212
Mr. Poole is literary in his tastes, and is a member of the Chicago Literary Club, of which the late Professor David Swing was an interested and active member, and which includes among its membership the best among Chicago's able and scholarly men. He has contributed occasionally to the columns of newspapers and periodicals articles on various topics, and has also contributed to the literature of his profession papers on special subjects, some of which have been prepared for and published by the Patent Law Association, an organization which embraces among its members all lawyers of prominence in this branch of legal profession in Chicago. Moreover, Mr. Poole is now, and for some time past has been, engaged in the writing of a treatise or text book, soon to be published, treating exhaustively of the law relating to the validity of letters patent as affected by the application for the patent and proceedings in the Patent Office prior to the grant. This work Mr. Poole is especially qualified to prepare, by reason of his extended experience in the matters treated of, and it promises, according to the judgment of patent lawyers who know of its intended character and scope, to be one of the most valuable contributions yet made to the literature of this branch of the law."
pg. 373