William Walter Phelps - State Judge and Final Days

State Judge and Final Days

While Phelps was vacationing, Governor of New Jersey George T. Werts appointed him Judge of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, then the state's highest court. Turning over the affairs of the legation to his successor, Phelps again returned to the United States to be sworn into his judicial role on June 20, 1893.

In February 1894, Phelps' throat began to trouble him seriously, and the illness confined him to his home for days. He continued to try to keep up with his work and was present until the adjournment of the term. A few days later he traveled to the Hygeia Hotel at Old Point Comfort in Virginia, a resort that in the past had been a place of rest for him.

Phelps became withdrawn and quiet, an attitude brought on by his physical inability to converse. The last entry in his diary is dated April 10, 1894. Phelps moved himself to Hot Springs, Virginia, where he enjoyed a temporary return of strength. Finding no lasting improvement in his health in Hot Springs, Phelps returned to his home in Teaneck on May 18. By May 31 he was bedridden, and in June he lapsed into a coma. He died June 17, 1894.

Hundreds of people lined the streets of Teaneck and Englewood to honor his funeral procession. The trees he had planted himself lined the path of this final journey. At the time of his death, Phelps owned half of what is presently Teaneck.

Read more about this topic:  William Walter Phelps

Famous quotes containing the words state, judge, final and/or days:

    Only by the supernatural is a man strong; nothing is so weak as an egotist. Nothing is mightier than we, when we are vehicles of a truth before which the state and the individual are alike ephemeral.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I judge a man by his actions with men, much more than by his declarations Godwards—When I find him to be envious, carping, spiteful, hating the successes of others, and complaining that the world has never done enough for him, I am apt to doubt whether his humility before God will atone for his want of manliness.
    Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)

    The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

    In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country’s fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language!
    Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1818–1883)