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Remembering Joseph Choate
By Ursula B.G. Kilner, Salisbury
As April 15 (the day our income tax is due—the date used to be March 15, remember?) approaches we should all remember our neighbor who died in 1917, Joseph Hodges Choate, whose summer home is now a museum tour house in Stockbridge, called "Naumkeag." Before mentioning Choate's work as a lawyer it might be appropriate to say: If you haven't visited Naumkeag, do make the trip! Joseph Choate did a lot of his thinking in his library at Naumkeag.
Choate went to Washington, DC in 1894 to argue against the constitutionality of the income tax. In 1895 he argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and he won! He paid his own way, paid his expenses, and was absent from his New York City law practice for a considerable length of time. We should all wish that we had our "neighbor" or a twin like him with us today.
The ruling of the unconstitutionality of the income tax stood till 1913, when the law was rewritten; it has since remained to make everyone's life more complicated and less profitable. Joseph Choate died in 1917, and I am sure he felt that his hard work to prove the unconstitutionality of the income tax was lost. Laws come and some go, but the income tax seems to grow annually—and we have also created a whole new industry in the U.S. for certified public accountants and tax lawyers.
When Joseph Choate died in 1917 his cortege went down Stockbridge's main street. The children were let out of school and lined the street from the road up to Naumkeag (across from the Red Lion Inn) to the cemetery. He was the biggest employer in the town, with 52 people helping on his farm and in his home. I have talked with one of the children who stood by the side of the main street that sad day. She remembers her father, who owned a large market in Stockbridge, saying to her: "There goes my best customer and a good friend."
The sad day of the anniversary of Joseph Choate's death will soon be upon us; remember him on May 14.
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