Charles Howland Russell

Charles Howland Russell was the last survivor of the three eminent lawyers who made the name of Stetson, Jennings & Russell one of the most widely known and respected of all American law partnerships. Mr. Russell was a native New Yorker, but also a descendant through both father and mother of founders and leading men of Plymouth Colony. His mother’s father and his own father were public-spirited New York merchants; for many years his father had been active in the directorate of the New York Bank of Commerce, and the son, in due course, also became a director in that institution, serving for many years. Thus predisposed to commercial law, his clear understanding of its principles soon brought him to a wide practice in that field. His work was largely that of office counsel, but he was from time to time drawn into court, mainly into the Appellate Division, where his arguments were always characterized by great lucidity of statement, simplicity of arrangement and thorough grasp of applicable legal principles.

As an adviser, he exhibited that quality of sound judgment which perhaps is the most valuable of all faculties which a counsel can contribute to the aid of those who seek his advice. He saw clearly, and his candid mind was incapable of sophistry. In the relation of lawyer to client he was what he was in social life a man of unswerving integrity, or warm human sympathy, of deeply religious nature. Added to these qualities, he possessed a sense of humor which, in his professional work, meant such quick recognition of the proper relation of realities to theory as enabled him to give unwelcome advice without offense.

Mr. Russell’s inherited sense of duty to render public service found expression in years of devoted labors for St. Luke’s Hospital, of which at the time of his death he was President, and in his work as Trustee of the New York Public Library from the date of its organization. It was in 1884 that he became a member of the Century, where his winning personality secured him many friends. What he wrote of his father, in a memorial published in 1903, that “nothing was more characteristic of him than his impatience and contempt of anything which seemed to him mean or small,” is as true a description of himself.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1922 Century Association Yearbook