Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS 3105was affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the United Confederate Veterans, and was an earnest member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,as is also his widow. Of the four children Judge Thurman is the eldest;William Marvin, an architect and contractor, is engaged in business in theCity of Atlanta; Lovic Pierce is identified with a leading manufacturingenterprise at Tifton, Berrien County; and the other child died in infancy.Judge Thurman passed the period of his childhood and youth in CowetaCounty, having been an infant at the time of the return of his parents fromAlabama to Georgia. That he made good use of the educational advantagesafforded him is indicated by the fact that when nineteen years of age he becamea successful teacher in the schools of his home county. He continued tofollow the pedagogic profession for six consecutive years, and in the meanwhile he devoted his otherwise leisure time to the study of law, his applicationto his textbooks being unremitting and his receptive mind enabling him tomake substantial progress in the absorption and assimilation of the principlesof jurisprudence. On the 9th of September, 1893, upon examination beforeJudge Charles L. Bartlett, who was presiding on the bench of the SuperiorCourt in the City of Macon, he was duly admitted to the bar, to the work ofwhich he came most admirably fortified. Judge Thurman engaged in practice at Monticello, the judicial center of Jasper County and was soon calledupon to serve as justice of the peace for the city district. He retained thisoffice four years, and was then elected city solicitor for the old County Court,since abolished, a position in which he served one term of two years. Hethen turned his attention entirely to the private practice of his profession andgave special attention to criminal law, in which connection he has won manynotable victories and been retained in some of the most important criminalcases presented in the courts of this part of the state, including a number ofmurder cases. He has made also an equally high reputation as a resourcefuland versatile lawyer in the civil branch of practice, and his clientage in thisfield has been of representative character. He is one of the attorneys retainedin the contest between Jasper and Butts counties relative to taxation againstthe Central Georgia Power Company, with incidental question as to the definition of the line between the two counties, the matter involving the reception- in perpetuity of $6,000 in taxes annually. Judge Thurman drafted the billwhose passage by the State Legislature provided for the creation of the Monticello Board of Education, and he was the first man to be nominated for president of the board, an honor which he declined in 1907. Judge Thurmanpurchased the old homestead plantation of his paternal great-grandfather, inFulton County, and there he was successfully engaged in agricultural pursuitsuntil 1914, when he sold the property, and since that time he has found ampledemands upon his time and attention in his service as judge of the City Courtof Monticello, an office of which he has been the incumbent since 1906, hiselection having occurred at the time when the County Court was abolished andhis retention of office having been through two re-elections.Judge Thurman is a man whose personality savors of the fine old traditionsthat marked the ante-bellum regime in the South.' He is courtly, dignifiedand affable, is genial and kindly, and is possessed of a natural wit and humorthat have come into specially effective play in his service as an advocate beforecourt or jury a vital human touch which never fails of appreciation in anytribunal of justice. He is a student and reader of the best in literature, remarkably familiar with and able to quote from the works of the great Englishpoets, and he finds much of solace and enjoyment in his close communion withthe many volumes in his large and select private library. He has definiteliterary talent and has written a number of poems of marked excellence, thesame having- received commendation from critical sources and also on the partof casual readers. He owns a fine home in Monticello, and the same is knownfor its generous and gracious hospitality, and he holds other valuable prop-