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- A standard history of Elkhart County, Indiana : an authentic narrative of the past, with particular attention to the modern era in the commercial, industrial, educational, civic and social development (1916)
Joseph Holton Defrees. Among the native sons of Elkhart County whose careers have been largely identified with other communities, is Joseph Holton Defrees, who for more than a quarter of a century has been identified with the Chicago bar, and has long been recognized as one of the foremost lawyers and business men of that city. Mr. Defrees served twice as president of the Chicago Bar Association, was vice president of the Illinois State Bar Association, was the first lawyer to be elected president of the Chicago Association of Commerce, and is at this writing serving as chairman of the executive committee and vice president of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States.
Joseph Holton Defrees was born at Goshen April 10, 1858, and is a son of James McKinney and Victoria (Holton) Defrees. His father was born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1833 and died in 1859, at the age of twenty-six, while the mother was born in Kentucky in 1839 and died in 1865, also at the age of twenty-six. Joseph H. Defrees never knew his father and he was only seven years of age when he lost his mother. He was an only child. His father, James Defrees, graduated at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana, and was educated in the law in what is now the law department of Harvard University. He located for practice at Goshen and was serving as prosecuting attorney of Elkhart County at the time of his death. He was also one of the founders of the Goshen Times.
In politics he was first a whig and later a republican.
The grandparents of Mr. Defrees were Joseph Hutton and Mary (McKinney) Defrees, and his grandfather was identified very closely with the pioneer history of Northern Indiana.
The early members of this family were of French Huguenot origin, and the first ancestors emigrated from Holland to New York. From one of the brothers who came to this country the present family line is descended. The grandfather of Joseph Hutton Defrees, the great grandfather of the Chicago lawyer, was born and reared in New York. When about twelve years of age he went to Trenton, New Jersey, and later to Philadelphia, where he served an apprenticeship as a carpenter. During the Revolutionary war he took service as carpenter on board a ship sailing between Philadelphia and Cuba and remained in that service nearly the entire seven years of war. He was three times made a prisoner of war and suffered much during his confinement on the notorious prison ship Jersey. He had many adventures as a sailor during the war, and at one time had a considerable fortune in prize money, but the ship and cargo in which he invested it was lost and he retired from the sea to take up steady work at his trade. He remained in Philadelphia until the fall of 1786, and then moved to Virginia and bought a farm in Rockbridge County. After living there about twenty years he sold out and came to Ohio in October, 181 1. He settled near Piqua, and died there in August, 1826, when about seventy-three years of age. In his family were the following children : John, James, Anna, Joseph, Anthony, Rebecca, Archibald, Mary, Anna. Elizabeth, Rebecca and Thomas Jefferson, twelve in all.
James Defrees, a son of this Revolutionary character, served an apprenticeship in the business of hat maker, worked as a journeyman at the trade, and in Tennessee married Miss Margaret Dougherty. For several years they lived at Sparta, Tennessee. From there he moved to Piqua, Ohio, carried on business as a hatter, and at one time was postmaster of the town. By his first wife James Defrees had nine children : John D., Joseph Hutton, Harriet, James, Anthony, Mary, William, Margaret and Caroline. By a second marriage he had four other children.
Among the former children John and Joseph were especially conspicuous in Northern Indiana. Joseph was the grandfather of the subject of this sketch. Both John and Joseph served a time at the printing business in the Gazette office at Piqua and they then took by ox team and wagon the first printing press ever taken west of Detroit and, at South Bend, Indiana, began the publication of the New Pioneer, which was the first paper issued west of Detroit. It afterwards became the South Bend Register and was issued as such for a number of years. Schuyler Colfax learned the printer's trade on that paper, and subsequently bought the plant and was editor of the paper while he was in congress. John D. Defrees subsequently went to Indianapolis and edited the State Journal a number of years. While thus engaged and afterward he served as public printer several times during the administration of Presidents Lincoln, Johnson, Grant and Hayes.
After his experience in the pioneer newspaper at South Bend, Joseph Hutton Defrees went to Goshen and became a merchant and banker. During the reconstruction period after the Civil war he was a member of congress from Indiana.
It was in the home of his grandfather, Joseph Hutton Defrees, that the Chicago lawyer was reared after the death of his parents. He was educated in the public schools, attended Earlham College at Richmond. Indiana, and completed his education in Northwestern University. He was admitted to the bar at Goshen in 1879 and shortly afterward became a member of the firm of Baker, Defrees & Baker at Goshen. The senior member of this firm was the venerable John H. Baker, one of Elkhart County's most eminent men and for a number of years a federal judge. The junior member was his son, Francis E. Baker, who is now the presiding judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the seventh judicial In 1888 Mr. Defrees left Goshen and went to Chicago. He became a member of the firm of Shuman & Defrees, and in 1892 became a member of the firm of Aldrich, Payne & Defrees, which subsequently became Defrees, Brace & Ritter, and still later Defrees, Buckingham, Ritter & Campbell. He is now senior member of the firm of Defrees, Buckingham & Eaton, and most of his practice is in corporation law.
Mr. Defrees has well been characterized as "a business man by nature, a lawyer by profession, and by instinct a keen judge of men and affairs," and with these qualifications it is only natural he has won himself an unusual place in the world of business. Though he has gained almost equal distinction in both his profession and in business, it is significant that he has received some of the highest honors from organizations of lawyers and business men in Chicago. It is his distinction that he is the only man who has ever held the presidency of the Chicago Bar Association two terms in succession. Then in 1914 the Chicago Association of Commerce for the first time elected a lawyer as its president, and this choice was due to the fact that the members of the commerce association considered Mr. Defrees an unusually capable business man.
The career of Mr. Defrees is a competent illustration of a tendency which was observed by Hon. James Bryce, who in seeking to distinguish between the American bar and the English bar found that American lawyers were to an increasing extent becoming identified with business affairs. Thus it is that Mr. Defrees is a lawyer many of whose associations have been with business affairs and with business men, both as a director and adviser in many business organizations.
Mr. Defrees was the first president of the Indiana Society of Chicago and succeeded himself for a second term in that office. It was in 1909-11 that he served his two terms as president of the Chicago Bar Association, and in 1914 was elected president of the Chicago Association of Commerce. He is a member of the Chicago Club, the Union League Club, the Mid-Day Club, the South Shore Country Club, the City Club, the Chicago Literary Club, the Onwentsia Country Club and the Hamilton Club. He was one of the founders of the Hamilton Club. He also belongs to the Bankers Club of America in New York City, and to the Illinois, the Chicago and the American Bar Associations. He has also served as vice president of the Civic Federation of Chicago. In the Chicago Association of Commerce he was a member of a number of important committees in the years preceding his service as president of the association. On October 4, 1882. at Buffalo, New York, Mr. Defrees married Miss Harriet McNaughton, daughter of Daniel McNaughton. Mr. Defrees and wife have one son, Donald, who graduated from Yale University and the Harvard Law School and is now a member of the firm of Defrees, Buckingham & Eaton in Chicago.
Something of his personal characteristics is given in a magazine article which described Mr. Defrees' business record a year or so ago : "He is not an exceptionally large man, but with eyes like his a man does not need physical bulk to hold attention. Set under a good forehead, these eyes are liable to hold you so closely that you overlook the determined turn to the mouth and the foresight indicated by the drawn back ears. He receives you kindly, waits to get your side of the story and then if need be carries his point in a manner carefully planned to avoid hurting your feelings more than is absolutely necessary. He uses words as a surgeon does a scalpel. Friends he has by the host of course - he likes to help the young fellows, and the other night scores of them joined with men as old as their fathers to serenade him on the anniversary of his birth. Travel is his recreation."
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Our Family History
1858 - 1929 (70 years)
1839 - 1865 (26 years)
Joseph Hutton Defrees, b. 13 May 1812, Sparta, White, Tennessee, USA
