JUDGE   PEYTON  L.  WADE

Bibliophile Extraordinaire

Peyton Wade was a smart man.  His insatiable appetite for knowledge, his intense passion for books, and his enduring love for the law led Wade to the pinnacle of the legal profession in Georgia.

Peyton L. Wade was born at Lebanon Forest in Screven County, Georgia on January 9, 1865.  It was the bleak winter before the end of the American Civil War.  Peyton’s father, Dr. Robert Wade, was serving as a steward and quartermaster in Gen. Joseph Johnston’s Army of the Tennessee. Johnston and his men were trying to outlast the Union army under General William T. Sherman, which had taken Savannah and was moving northward toward North Carolina.  Wade was named for his grandfather, Rev. Peyton L. Wade of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  The elder Peyton was a large land and slave owner in Screven County and one of the largest slave and land owners in the state.

Peyton was educated by private tutors in his early life.  He later matriculated at Boy’s High in Atlanta.  In February 1884, Wade entered the University of Georgia in Athens, where his parents were then living.  While at the university, Peyton was awarded the position of Speaker of the Junior and Senior classes.  This designation resulted from his performance in oratorical competitions.  As a senior he served on the editorial staff of “The Pandora,” the university’s newspaper.  Wade was named the Class Poet.  He graduated fifth in his class in the summer of 1886.  For three years following his graduation, Wade contributed articles to “The Pandora.”

Peyton Wade accepted an offer for the principalship of the Dublin Academy a month after his graduation.  After one year as principal of the Academy, Wade assumed the position of editor of “The Dublin Times.”

After a half year stint as editor of “The Post,” Wade returned to his native county to study law under the supervision of his uncle, Ulysses P. Wade.  The law was a part of his family on his mother’s side.  His mother, Frederica Washburn, was a niece of Gov.  Joseph Washburn of Massachusetts, a Harvard law professor and treatise writer on real property.  Through his Washburn family (one of the first to settle in Massachusetts) Peyton descended from Mary Chilton, the first woman to set foot on Plymouth Rock.   Peyton began his legal career in November 1888 when he was admitted to the bar at a session of the Superior Court of Screven County.  The newly admitted attorney went home to Athens to open his law practice.  Wade recognized the need for attorneys back in Dublin.  After all, Dublin was on the verge of a commercial, educational, and agricultural revolution.  Signs were there when he was last in the city.  Wade returned to Dublin in 1889.  His practice was successful.  It was lucrative, too.

Wade’s practice primarily consisted of civil law.  His stature among  fellow attorneys quickly rose.  In 1912, Wade was chosen by his fellow members of the bar as fourth  vice-president of the Georgia Bar Association.  Among his larger clients were the Wrightsville and Tennille Railroad and the Central of Georgia Railroad.  At the turn of the century, his office was located in the Hicks Building on the southwest corner of the courthouse square.  In the summer of 1905, he moved his office to the newly constructed Brantley Building on the northwest corner of West Jackson and North Lawrence streets.

To say Wade loved books is an serious understatement.  He loved books like boys love girls, counting  his volumes by the thousands.  Many of these were rare and valuable.   When the Carnegie Library opened in 1904, Wade donated some four hundred  of his more valuable books to the library’s scant collection.  He served on the city’s library board for several years.  His personal library, located in his home which stood  on the southwest corner of Oak Street and Bellevue Avenue, was one of the largest in this area, if not the state.  In 1918, Wade donated thirteen hundred  books to his alma mater, the University of Georgia.

Wade avoided business interests, though he was a financial backer of a proposed five-mile long street car line in Dublin.  He never touted his religious affiliation, but he was a faithful member of the Presbyterian Church.  Wade shied away from politics, though he entertained the notion of running for Congress in 1902.

One of Wade’s biggest cases was actually a capital case in 1906. Wade was chosen to aid the State of Georgia in the prosecution of Gus Tarbutton and Joseph Fluker for the murder of Letcher Tyre.  Tyre was killed in an area along the line dividing Laurens and Johnson counties.  The defendant’s lawyers successfully contended the alleged murder actually took place in Johnson County and not in Laurens.  After an investigation and survey by the Secretary of State, the county line was moved closer to the river. The venue for the trial was transferred to the Superior Court of Johnson County, then in the Middle Circuit, a forum much more favorable to the defendants. 

In 1913, a vacancy occurred on the bench of the newly created Georgia Court of Appeals following the resignation of Benjamin H. Hill, son of Georgia’s great senator of the Civil War era. The other two members of the court were Judges L.S. Roan and Richard B. Russell, father of another great Georgia senator.  Under the law at that time, the vacancy was filled by the governor.  The governor was John M. Slaton.  Slaton was a classmate and close friend of Wade’s.  Slaton served as Wade’s best man in his 1895 wedding to Gussie Black, daughter of Congressman George Black and grand daughter of Congressman Edward Black of Georgia.    Naturally,  Slaton appointed his close friend to the judgeship at the urging of more than a dozen bar associations from cities in east central Georgia.

Wade’s first reported case was Pitts vs. the City of Atlanta.  The Court of Appeals of Georgia is unique.  In many cases,  it has exclusive jurisdiction and is a court of final judgment.  When Chief Judge Russell resigned to resume his private law practice in 1916, Wade was chosen by his fellow judges as Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals.  He was only the third chief judge in the history of the court.

Judge Wade died in Atlanta on August 29, 1919.  He was laid to rest in Athens.  Colleagues described him as “a noble citizen.”  A fellow appellate judge remembered him as “a brilliant conversationalist, who lightened our labor by his ready wit.”    At a memorial session of the Court of Appeals held on December 8, 1919, Judge Frank Harwell may have said it best: “ Now that his day of toil is through, I love to think he sits at ease with some old volume that he knew upon his knees.”