Dedication of Judge Trapp's Old English Law Books

Remarks by Robert MacCrate, Esq.

Dean John Hutson and Library Director Judith Gire, may I on behalf of Judge Trapp's family thank you and the entire Franklin Pierce community for this tribute to Judge Harry Trapp and your restoration and dedication to his memory of his unique collection of old English law books. As a New Hampshire lawyer, judge and public servant, Judge Trapp epitomized the very best in the law.

When Judge Trapp died in 1956 he was survived by his four children: Harry E. Trapp, Jr., Virginia Rice, Connie MacCrate (my wife), and Jackie Wiese. Sadly, Harry and Jackie are no longer with us to share in this occasion.

Following Judge Trapp's death, Harry, who was a physician in Laconia, gave these law books to me in August 1956 as the only lawyer in the immediate family circle. I took them home with Connie and me to New York.

Over the next more than 40 years, until the year 2000, whenever I moved my base of operations, the books moved with me. However, from my deep emersion in recent years in the process by which our profession passes from one generation of lawyers to the next, the learning, the skills and the values of a public calling, I came to realize that Judge Trapp's unusual collection of old English law books (including cases dating back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century) should be placed where they could be part of that process of legal education and professional development in which you are engaged.

The Library of the Franklin Pierce Law Center was recognized by the Trapp family as an eminently fitting place for the collection to be lodged.

We have brought the books back to Judge Trapp's beloved New Hampshire, where he had the books from the time he practiced law in Laconia with Congressman Fletcher Hale.

Now they will be lodge in this thriving young law school, established after Judge Trapp's death, but a school that provides the educational opportunities today that he, as a young man, grasped as he worked his way successively, between 1908 and 1916, through Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.

You have graciously accepted this gift from Judge Trapp's children, had the ancient volumes restored to prime condition, and are placing them in the Kenison Room of the Library where they can help insprie generations of new lawyers in the abiding traditions of the legal profession in the footsteps of Judge Trapp.

How pleased he would be.

Thank you.

©2002 Franklin Pierce Law Center Library