Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

2880 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANShe lost his right arm. His memory is honored of men, and nobly did he answerthe call: Ready in life! Ready in death!WILLIAM S. FLORENCE. A scion of an old and distinguished Georgia family,Mr. Florence has, through his character and high achievement, contributednew prestige to a name that has been significantly prominent and honored inthe annals of the Empire State of the South, and he is known as one of therepresentative members of the bar of the Oemulgee Circuit, with a record ofmany important forensic victories in connection with both criminal and civicbranches of law. He is engaged in the practice of his profession at Monticello,the judicial center of Jasper County, and his distinguished father, JudgeAdial S. Florence, 'was at the time of his death one of the most eminent andhonored members of the bar of this county, a tribute to his memory beingentered on other pages of this publication, together with a review and estimateof his career and a record concerning the family history, so that a repetitionof the data is not demanded in the article here presented.William Stockbridge Florence was born at Newborn, Newton County,Georgia, on the 23d of April, 1869. His mother was Mary A. Dacus before hermarriage. Her father Ishaw W. Dacus, was sheriff of Benton County, Tennessee, and was killed in 1867 by Mulligan raiders. William S. Florence was achild at the time of the family removal to Walton County, where, in additionto having the fortuitous environment and associations of a home of patricianculture and refinement, he availed himself fully of the advantages of the publicschools. A natural predilection for study and reading was early manifestedand has resulted in his becoming a man of ripe scholarship and broad mentalken. As a youth he put his attainments to practical test and utilization bybecoming a teacher in the public schools, and he continued a successful andpopular representative of the pedagogic profession for a period of ten years,his services having been given principally in Walton, Morgan, Jasper andNewton counties.No better preceptorial advantages could have been aiforded than those thatwere his when he instituted the reading of law, for he carried forward hisstudies under the able direction of his father, and the solicitous attentiongiven by his father combined with his own characteristic diligence and receptiveness,enabled him to make rapid and substantial progress in the absorptionand assimilation of the involved science of jurisprudence. Mr. Florence wasadmitted to the bar of his native state in the year 1891, and during the intervening period of nearly a quarter of a century he has been established in thesuccessful practice of his profession at Monticello, where he has been longand closely associated with Judge Albert S. Thurman, who is now presidingon the bench of the City Court of Monticello and a sketch of whose careerappears elsewhere in this volume.Mr. Florence is consistently to be designated as one of the really eminentcriminal lawyers of Central Georgia, where he has been retained as attorneyand counsel in more than 100 murder cases tried in the courts of the OemulgeeCircuit. In all of the causes which he has thus presented as advocate forthe defense his record shows that in only one instance was his client convicted and sentenced to execution, which sentence was afterward commuted. Inthe domain of civil practice the success of Mr. Florence has been equally distinct and noteworthy, and he has appeared in connection with many of the important litigated causes in this department. He and Judge Thurman wereassociated as leading attorneys for Jasper County in the celebrated case ofJasper County versus Butts County and the Central Georgia Power Company, in the matter ef determination of the relative taxation to be paid bythe power company to the two counties and the defining of the line betweenthe two counties, the latter phase being that on which hinged the controversy in general, and the litigation being to bring about an adjudication in-