Presentation of the portrait of the late Walter A. Montgomery, to the Supreme Court of North Carolina

PRESENTATION OF THE PORTRAIT OF THE LATE WALTER A. MONTGOMERY TO THE SUPREME COURT OF NORTH CAROLINA sv HONORABLE T. T. HICKS OCTOBER ЗОТН. 1923 Tin1 Supreme Court being assembled, Mr. Hicks, on being recog¬ nized, addressed the Court as follows: May it Please Your Honors: The wife and son and daughter of Honorable Walter A. Montgomery, late an Associate Justice of this Court, have caused to be prepared a portrait of him, and have assigned to me the pleasant duty of presenting it to the Court. I now do so; and in connection therewith, since he was blessed with long life and good days, I will, by your leave, speak briefly of him. But, before beginning this sketch, I will present another but poetic negative that shows some of his features, apparent to the eye of the observant, as well as in this excellent likeness: “Thou shalt know him when he comes, Not by any din of drums. Nor the vantage of his airs ; Neither by his crown, Nor his gown, Nor anything he wears." The chain of events that produced the life and career of Walter Alexander Montgomery has many links. The most remote link we have been able to trace was severed from the chain on the night of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, in the year one thousand six hundred and eighty-five, when, on account of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a hundred thousand Protestants were slain in France and four hundred thousand more saved themselves by flight. One of the Montgomerys found refuge in Scotland, where, and in the North of Ireland, for a hundred years he and his descendants lived and intermarried. They loved not the Catholic Church, nor the Government of England. Their dislike of the former was because of its persecution of Huguenots, and of the latter because it oppressed the Irish and created by law artificial class distinctions. The founder of the family hi America, from which Judge Mont¬ gomery descended, arrived in New York from Ireland about the year