[Loran L. Lewis]

     Loran L. Lewis has been prominent at the bar and on the bench of western New York for nearly forty years. During all that time his record [51][52] has been one of which any man might well be proud, and which few men may hope to equal. Coming to Buffalo when it was little more than a large village, he has seen it grow and prosper, and has been a part of its growth and prosperity. While the law has claimed his first attention, he has been an active figure in various enterprises that have done much to build up and make great the Queen City of the Lakes.
     Born in Cayuga county, N. Y., in the quarter-century year, Mr. Lewis spent his early life in the central part of the state, and his education was begun in the city of Auburn. He was quite a young man when he determined to study law, and was only twenty-three years old when admitted to the bar. Then, as now, the question of location was an important one for the young lawyer to decide. Loran L. Lewis, after looking carefully over the field, determined to come to Buffalo. He arrived in that city in 1848, and it has been his home ever since. He did not have to wait long for clients, and his progress when once begun was continuous. He formed a partnership with C. O. Pool in 1854, and with several others afterward—with George Wadsworth, Wm. H. Gurney, A. G. Rice, Adelbert Moot, and with his own son, George L. Lewis. The firm name of Lewis, Moot & Lewis is best known to the younger generation of Buffalonians.
     Politics at one time demanded much of Mr. Lewis’s attention, and his services to the Republican party were rewarded in the fall of 1869 with a nomination to the state senate. The voters of Erie county endorsed the nomination, and Mr. Lewis had a seat in the highest legislative body of the state of New York for four years, having been returned for a second term in 1871. From the end of that period of service Senator Lewis, as everyone then called him, remained a private citizen until January 1, 1883, when he took his seat on the Supreme Court bench, to which he was elected from the 8th judicial district. For thirteen years he presided with dignity, fearlessness, impartiality, and unusual ability over many trials, some of grave importance, and others of slight interest to any but the parties at suit. For the last four years of his service on the bench Judge Lewis was honored with the appointment as a member of the General Term, and distinguished himself there by many valuable decisions. During the period of his life passed at the bar, Mr. Lewis was known as a trial lawyer of the highest rank. His examinations were marked by a searching directness that permitted nothing to be left hidden; his opponent always dreaded his shafts of sarcasm; and his appeals to the jury were eloquent, logical, and eminently successful. It is still said among the lawyers of Buffalo that there has never been, in the history of the Erie county bar, any other advocate who won so large a proportion of his cases before the jury as Mr. Lewis, and that when he went upon the bench he was regarded as an advocate unequaled in persuasiveness.
     Judge Lewis is interested in several of the banking institutions of Buffalo, being a director and vice president of the Third National Bank, and a director of the German-American Bank. He has found recreation in farming, and is the owner of a handsomely equipped farm at Lewiston, where he spends much of his leisure time. [52][53]
     PERSONAL CHRONOLOGY—Loran Lodowick Lewis was born at Mentz, Cayuga county, N. Y., May 9, 1825; came to Buffalo in the fall of 1848, was admitted to the bar in 1848; married Charlotte E. Pierson of East Aurora, N. Y., June 1, 1852; was elected state senator from the Erie county district in 1869, and was re-elected in 1871; was elected judge of the Supreme Court in the 8th judicial district in 1882, and served as such until 1895, when he retired by limitation of age.