SKETCHES OF STATE OFFICERS. 185

Burnt District Commission of Baltimore City. His offices
in the Glenn Building having been destroyed by the great
fire in February, 1904, Mr. Straus practiced for the year fol-
lowing the fire in the office of the Honorable William Pink-
ney Whyte. In 1906 he was appointed by the General
Assembly as Special Counsel for the State of Maryland in
the controversy of the State with the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad growing out of the suspension by the railroad com-
pany of the payments of dividends on the State's stock in
the Washington Branch of the railroad, and took a leading
part in effecting the- settlement and preparing the legislative
measures whereby the State disposed of its 5,500 shares of
the Washington Branch stock to the railroad company for
the sum of $2,500,000. In 1906 the Maryland Agricultural
College conferred the degree of Master of Arts upon Mr.
Straus.

President of the Senate: JOSEPH B. SETH (Democrat),
Easton.

Joseph Bruff Seth was born on November 25, 1845, in Bay
Hundred District of Talbot county, Md. His father was
Alexander Hamilton Seth, a farmer, also a member of the
House of Delegates of Maryland in 1844, and his mother was
Martha A. Haddaway, daughter of William Haddaway and
Ann Kersey. Mr. Seth's parental ancestor was Nicholas
Harvey, who came into the Province in 1634 with Leonard
Calvert. He was granted a patent for land on the Patauxent
River, opposite Point Patience, called "St. Joseph's Manor."
Nicholas Harvey was a member of the First Assembly held
in the colony; he was also one of the first to receive a mili-
tary commission, having received a commission from
Leonard Calvert on the 3d of January, 1639, to raise a com-
pany to go against the nation called the Maquantequants, a
tribe of Indians who were committing sundry insolences
upon the English inhabitants.

Mr. Seth was educated in the public schools of Maryland
and under private tutors, and was admitted to the Bar of
the State in Baltimore in 1867, since which time he has been
a successful practitioner, both in Baltimore city and Talbot
county.

He sat in the Legislature as a Delegate for Talbot county
in the sessions of 1874, 1884 and 1886, during the latter term
being Speaker Of the House. In 1905 he was elected to the
State Senate and was chosen president of that body in the
session of 1906.

By appointment of Governor Robert M. McLane, in 1884,
Mr. Seth served as Judge Advocate General, with the rank