Strangers to Us All Lawyers and Poetry

Milton Seward Griswold

(1839-    )
Wisconsin

"Milton Seward Griswold was born in 1839 in the State of New York. His ancestors were of colonial stock, his great-grandfather having served in the War of the Revolution and his grandfather in the War of 1812. When Milton was five years old, his parents settled on a 180-acre claim in what was to become Waukesha County. He spent his boyhood in the pioneer home until the age of twenty and received his early education in the county schools. In 1859, he enrolled in the classics course at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and, though intermittently absent for reasons of ill health and in order to attend lectures at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor, received the arts baccauaureate in 1864. After bar admission the same year, Griswold continued the study of classics independently and, in 1866, recieved the A.M. degree from the University of Wisconsin. Griswold remained a student of literature throughout his life. He wrote and published poetry, was elected the poet of the Alumni Association of the University of Wisconsin, and retained the reptuation of a man eminently knowledgeable in Latin and Greek. After practicing law in Madison and Menomonee Falls, Griswold moved to the Village of Waukesha in 1870, where he successfully ran for the office of county judge on the Republican ticket three years later. After serving the four-year term, Griswold declined renominationa and resumed the practice of law."

[Zigurds L. Zile, Vosburg v. Putney: A Centennial Story, 1992 Wis. L. Rev. 889, 905]

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