My Genealogy Hound

HON. FRANK E. SESSIONS, ex-special county judge of Chautauqua county, and the present secretary of the New York State League of Loan and Building associations, is one of the ablest and best known lawyers of western New York. He is a son of Columbus and Cordelia (French) Sessions, and was born at Chautauqua, on the celebrated lake of the same name, in Chautauqua county, New York, May 22, 1847. The Sessions family is of honorable New England lineage and for several generations has been noted for the enterprise, intelligence and energy of its members. John Sessions, the great-grandfather of Frank E. Sessions, was a native, in all probability, of Massachusetts. He was of English extraction and for a time resided at the foot of the Green mountains in Vermont. He afterwards removed from that State to New York, where he continued to follow his occupation of droving until his death. His son, Schuyler Sessions (grandfather), was born in the “Green Mountain” State and came with his father to New York, where he cleared out a farm in Chautauqua county. He then joined in the westward tide of emigration to the prairie lands west of the “Father of Waters” and settled in Iowa where he remained until his death, which occurred in 1857. He was a farmer and a democrat, and married Sallie Green by whom he had five sons and two daughters. All of these sons are living, and one of them, Columbus Sessions (father), was born in Vermont, March 31, 1818. He came to Chautauqua county in 1832, removed to Wisconsin in 1852, returned to this State in 1868, and in 1880 went to Iowa where he now resides, at Algona, with one of his sons. He is a farmer and tanner by occupation and a republican in politics. He has been twice married; his first wife was Cordelia French, who died in December, 1863, aged thirty-six years; and after her death he married Mrs. Cordelia Herrick, widow of Captain Herrick, who served and was killed in the late war. By his first marriage he had three sons: H. Alanson, a marble dealer and insurance agent of Algona, Iowa; Frank E. and Schuyler S., a prominent lawyer and one of the nine directors of the State Agricultural Association, of Iowa, being the youngest man by twenty years, who has ever been elected to that position. Mrs. Cordelia (French) Sessions was a daughter of Samuel French (maternal grandfather), who was born in Massachusetts and settled, about 1820, at French Creek, this county, where he afterwards died. He was a farmer by occupation, a Baptist in religious belief and an old-line whig in political opinion. He was married in Massachusetts, and was the father of four sons and two daughters.

Frank E. Sessions left the common schools of Fon du Lac county, Wisconsin, at the early age of fifteen years to engage in teaching, which he followed continuously for seven years. During that time he taught thirteen terms and spent all his leisure hours in reading and self-study. He then sought for a wider field for the exercise of his powers than that bounded by the walls of the school-room, and entered upon the study of law, with his uncle, Walter L. Sessions, of Panama. After reading steadily for one year he gave his attention, partly, during 1869, to the tanning business, but with the beginning of the next year he applied himself with renewed assiduity to his legal studies and was admitted to the New York bar in April, 1873. From the time that he began the study of law until his admission at the bar, he kept up his studies and made his own way without pecuniary assistance from any one. In 1876 he opened an office in Jamestown where he has practiced his profession successfully ever since.

He was appointed by Gov. Cornell, as special county judge for Chautauqua county and his services as such were so well and ably rendered that at the end of his term he was elected to the same office, for a term of three years. At the end of his second term Judge Sessions resumed the practice of his profession at Jamestown and in the courts of the adjoining counties. Although busily engaged in an extensive law practice, yet he always gives encouragement and aid to any enterprise that is calculated to be of real benefit in any way to his fellow-citizens. He has been a leading spirit in the organization and management of the Jamestown Permanent Loan and Building Association, and at the present time is one of its board of directors and its attorney. This association was organized November 22, 1881, has built hundreds of houses already, and is a potent factor of the city’s present prosperity.

On June 1, 1876, he united in marriage with Julia R. Bush, of Jamestown. To their union have been born two children: Clara H., born December 28, 1880, died April 11, 1890; and Edgar W., born February 11, 1887.

In politics Judge Sessions, while always a pronounced republican yet has never been a strenuous or bitter partisan. He is a member of Mt. Moriah Lodge, No. 145, Free and Accepted Masons, and the Methodist Episcopal church of Jamestown, of which he has long served as treasurer. He has also served as superintendent of its Sunday-school and is now superintendent of the senior department of the school. Able as a jurist and eminent as a lawyer, he ranks high in his profession in western New York, where to be successful and attain standing at the bar, a lawyer must have decided ability and possess success-winning qualities of the highest order.