Charles Staughton Bentley
Hon. Charles Staughton Bentley, senior member of the law firm Bentley, McCrystal & Biggs in the Engineers Building has had a long and most honorable career both in private practice and as a judge in Ohio. He did his first work as a practicing lawyer at Cleveland forty-five years ago.
He was born at Chagrin Falls, Ohio, September 5, 1846, son of Staughton and Orsey (Baldwin) Bentley. His grandfather, Rev. Adamson Bentley, was a native of Pennsylvania of Quaker stock and became widely known in Northern Ohio as one of the pioneer Disciple preachers. The Bentleys are of English ancestry as were also the Baldwin family. Staughton Bentley was born in Ohio and followed the business of merchandising. He died when Judge Bentley was six years of age. At that time the care and maintenance of the six children devolved upon the widowed mother. By character and ability she was well fitted for the task. She was a native of Ohio and her ancestors had settled in Connecticut in colonial times.
Judge Bentley attended common schools until he was eighteen when he entered the Eclectic Institute at Hiram, Ohio. In 1864 he took a course in Eastman's Business College at Poughkeepsie, New York, and then spent three years clerking in a country store at Mantua, Ohio. At the age of twenty-one he entered Hillsdale College at Hillsdale, Michigan, and received both the A. B. and A. M. degrees from that institution. He was graduated with the class of 1870. The year following his college life he was in the wholesale lumber business at Allegan, Michigan. While there he took up the study of law with Col. B. D. Pritchard, a prominent lawyer and banker of Allegan and nationally known as colonel of the regiment of Michigan cavalry which effected the capture of Jefferson Davis as he was fleeing south from the Confederate capital of Richmond. In the winder of 1872 Judge Bentley came to Cleveland, and studied law in the office of Darius Cadwell, and was admitted to the Ohio bar in September 1872. At the same time he was admitted to practice in the federal courts. He had a brief experience in practice with the firm of Barber & Andrews at Cleveland, but in February, 1873, moved to Bryan, Ohio, where he formed a partnership with Hon. A. M. Pratt. The law firm of Pratt & Bentley continued from 1873 to 1887. In 1874 he was elected city solicitor of Bryan and in the fall of 1875 was elected prosecuting attorney of Williams County, an office he filled during 1877-79.
In the fall of 1887 Judge Bentley was elected judge of the Circuit Court of the Sixth Ohio District for the short term of one year and was reelected without opposition in the fall of 1888 for the full term of six years. He thus filled that office from 1887 to 1895. Before his elevation to the bench he was little known beyond the counties near his home. His character and services brought him distinction over the entire state. His decisions were not only valuable interpretations of the law but were marked by a clarity and conciseness which left no misunderstanding even on the most controverted points. Many of these decisions are found reported in the Ohio Circuit Court Reports, Vol. 3 to Vol. 10, inclusive. Throughout the seven years he was on the bench his associates were Judges George R. Haynes and Charles H. Scribner. In the attainments of its judges the Sixth District at that time was not surpassed by any other Ohio district. While on the bench Judge Bentley was called upon to deal with three notable subjects of litigation in which his work was that of a pioneer. These subjects grew out of the extended use of petroleum, natural gas and electricity as a motive power. The introduction of electricity into cities for the propulsion of street cars was at first bitterly resisted. Strange as it may seem at the present time one of the chief objections made to its use was that it would be destructive of property and lives to such an extent that its use in the streets would compel the abandonment of the thoroughfares by vehicles drawn by horses, and would thus constitute a standing menace to all safety. Injunctions to prevent its use were frequently sought and all these questions had to be tried out and tested before the courts. Thus some of the cases in which Judge Bentley sat as a judge established important precedents and principles in the law dealing with these forms of public utility. Whether on the bench or in private practice Judge Bentley has been regarded as a most able and upright lawyer and a thorough student with the utmost industry at his command in the preparation of his cases.
In May, 1896, Judge Bentley returned to Cleveland, and for several years practiced as a partner with Charles H. Stewart. He has been a member of various successful law firms of the city. He has served as dean of the law department of Baldwin-Wallace University, is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, a member of the Cleveland Law Library, Cleveland Bar Association, Ohio State Bar Association, Cleveland Chamber of Commerce and belongs to the Delta Tau Delta college fraternity. In politics he is a republican.
Judge Bentley married May 4, 1874, Miss Isabel Kempton of North Adams, Michigan. She died October 30, 1877, leaving one daughter, Isabelle, who graduated from the Woman's College of Western Reserve University, and married Jay Ambler of Cleveland, Ohio. She died a year later a victim of typhoid fever. July 30, 1890 Judge Bentley married Mary Esther (Derthick) Logan of Toledo. Her death occurred in 1911.
From Cleveland - Special Limited Edition, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago & New York, 1918 v.1