History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 113

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358

USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men > Part 113

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During the war Mr. Bailey acted as special artist and correspondent of the New York Illustrated News,

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and his many sketches and accounts of war incidents ap- pearing in that pictorial work were noted for a degree of accuracy hardly to be expected from mere war corre- spondents and artists, whose duty required of them no exposure to extraordinary dangers.

After the surrender of Lee and Johnson, Capt. Bailey was mustered out of the service of the gov- ernment, and shortly after received from Governor Fletcher, of Missouri, a position on his staff, with the rank of first lieutenant, and was assigned to duty as enrolling officer of the city and county of St. Louis, and enrolled all citizens subject to military duty into regiments of Missouri militia. In June, 1865, Mr. Bailey had sufficiently recovered from his wound to

commence the study of law in the office of Hon. Charles D. Drake, of St. Louis. He completed his legal studies in the office of the late Judge James K. Knight, of St. Louis, and was admitted to the bar of Missouri in 1866 by the late Judge Reber, and to practice in the United States courts by an examining board in 1867. He has ever since been practicing law in the city of St. Louis, enjoying a handsome practice in the civil and appellate courts, which was won only by a strict and careful attention to business, conscientious discharge of duty, and unquestioned integrity, coupled with acknowledged ability.

In 1870, Mr. Bailey married Mary G., daughter of Dr. G. W. Scollay, of St. Louis, of which union three children were born, two of whom still survive. For the benefit of his family Mr. Bailey established his home in Kirkwood, a suburban town thirteen miles from the city on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, where he resided until 1878, when he removed to the city.

When Mr. Bailey went to Kirkwood the town court was held in general contempt on account of its futile efforts to enforce the law and command respect. The orders and writs of the court were disregarded and remained unexecuted, and the recorder was in court openly defied and insulted by some of those who were violent in their opposition to the enforcement of the town ordinances against the sale of intoxicating liquors without a license. At the earnest solicitation of the recorder, Mr. Bailey accepted the appointment of pros- ecuting attorney for the town, and grasping the situa- tion, at once inaugurated a new order of things. His first step was to enforce respect for the law and the court, which having been accomplished by a series of energetic and masterly proceedings, prosecutions were then vigorously conducted, fines were collected, and the guilty punished, and Kirkwood has ever since had a worthy court.

In 1874, Mr. Bailey was nominated and elected for two years a member of the House of Representatives

of the Missouri Legislature. His representative dis- trict extended entirely around the city of St. Louis, from the Missouri to the Mississippi River, embrac- ing three large townships. He was elected as a " Straight" Republican, defeating both a Democratic and a " Liberal" Republican opponent. In the Legis- lature Mr. Bailey took an active and prominent part in all measures of importance which came before the House, and, as the most prominent Republican news- paper of the State said, " made his influence felt on the right side of almost every contest in the House."

An incident illustrating the fidelity of Mr. Bailey to his tried friends is found in the record of the con- test between the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company and its colored passengers in 1873. The latter were sold only first-class tickets, but were compelled to ride in the smoking-car. Women and children and infants constituted no exception to the requirement. Finally a colored girl attempted to enter the regular Kirk- wood passenger-car, but was forcibly opposed and mal- treated by the brakeman. Her friends sought re- dress, but resident counsel were generally afraid to take hold of the case on account of " public senti- ment." Mr. Bailey was appcaled to, and accepted the case, ignoring " public sentiment," and glad to be able to cancel a portion of his indebtedness to the colored race on account of services gratuitously ren- dered to him while in the Confederate lines. He declared that the requirement of the railroad company was a discrimination against "race and color," and was prohibited by the Constitution of the United States and of Missouri, and secured the arrest, con- viction, and fining of the brakeman for assault and battery. A civil suit for damages was also prepared, but was ended by the company agreeing formally to acknowledge the right of colored passengers to ride in first-class seats at first-class prices. The case at- tracted widespread attention, the question involved (the application of the Fifteenth Amendment) being put to the test for the first time in Missouri.

: During the labor riots of 1877, when mobs held possession of St. Louis, Mr. Bailey's military knowl- edge was rendered available, and he was prominent in effecting the military organization in Kirkwood for home protection known as the " Kirkwood Rifles," which was composed of the most prominent citizens of the town. The company was drilled to efficiency by Mr. Bailey and others, and its services were ten- dered to and accepted by the town authorities to assist in the preservation of the public peace. Mr. Bailey succeeded Capt. Wright as commander of the com- pany, and remained in command until its services were no longer required.

Rich & A. Barret

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

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In politics Mr. Bailey is an earnest Republican.

He is generally recognized as a skilled parliamen- tarian, and is a prominent member of various orders and societics,-the Masonic fraternity, the American Bar Association, the national and local Legion of Honor, the Society of the Army of the Tennessec, and the Grand Army of the Republic, etc.

Mr. Bailey is also an enthusiastic advocate of out- door recreation, especially for professional men. Being deprived, on account of his wound, of even the un- satisfactory benefits afforded by a city gymnasium, he has always set apart convenient days for out-door ex- ercises in the hunting-fields, elaiming that more can be accomplished in six days by spending one in such recreation than otherwise. He is an expert wing-shot, and an admirer of well-bred and well-trained setters and pointers, and attributes his present excellent state of health and power of endurance to a naturally tough and wiry physical constitution, somewhat shat- tered during the war, but preserved and fostered by periodical and ample exercise in the open air of the country, which he regards as a sure prevention of most of the complaints which mind and flesh are heir to.

Late in the eighteenth century (about 1790) Robert Morrison, of Philadelphia, settled in ancient and quaint Kaskaskia. Fortunate in many things, most of all fortunate in his wooing, he courted and won Eliza A. Lowry, daughter of Col. Lowry, of Balti- more, for years afterwards called " the most brilliant woman in the valley of the Mississippi." Of this marriage James L. D. Morrison was born, April 12, 1816. His father became the largest mail-contractor in Illinois. When but fourteen young Morrison was sent hither and thither, collecting drafts and moncy, and arranging business matters with tact and fidelity. By 1832 he carried mail two days, " kept store" one day, and attended school three days each week. That year he became midshipman in the United States navy, cruiscd twenty-seven months in the South Pa- cifie, afterwards in the West Indies, became rich, studicd law, and in 1836, returning to Illinois, completed his studies and was admitted. He joined the Whigs with ardor, stumped the State, and beeame one of its best-known Icaders, but in later years has been a Democrat. Hc now resides in St. Louis. Col. Morrison's second wife is Adele Sarpy, daughter of John B. Sarpy, one of the pioneer St. Louis merchants.

Richard Bland, of the first Continental Congress, had no more notable descendant than Hon. Peter E. Bland, born in St. Charles County, March 29, 1824. He was also connected with the learned Chancellor

Bland, of Virginia. Educated in the Methodist college at St. Charles, forced to teach school for a livelihood, student in Judge Lackland's office till 1849, young Bland struggled upwards, and when admitted opened an office, and soon became known as a worker, com- manding a large practice. From 1861 to 1863 he served in the Union army as colonel of a Missouri cavalry regiment. Locating in Memphis, Tenn., he practiced with success ; in 1868 returned to St. Louis, almost a stranger, but became connected with some of the most important Supreme Court cases, and his services have since been in continual demand. His wife, Miss Virginia Clark, of Richmond, Va., whom he married in 1845, died in 1870, leaving three chil- dren, all grown.

Richard Aylett Barret, son of Richard F. and Maria Buckner Barret, was born at Cliffland, the . home of his grandfather, a place of great natural beauty, ncar Greensburg, Ky. The estate was situated on a plateau, diversified by hill and dale, and bordered on the one side by forests of beech and oak, and on the other by lofty cliffs, composed of shelving rocks, to which cling mosses and cedars. At the base of the plateau winds the silvery course of the Green River as far as the eye can reach.

Richard A. Barret spent his early youth at Spring- field, Ill., and at St. Louis, where he attended the school of Edward Wyman and the St. Louis Univer- sity, and also received instruction from Chester Hard- ing, who entered him at Phillips Academy, Exeter, N. H., to prepare for Harvard College, which he en- tered in 1852. On the journey eastward his com- panions were Mrs. Rhodes, John Cavender, J. S. Cavender, and Chester Harding (the two last men- tioned afterwards rising to distinction as officers in the Union army during the civil war), and the route taken extended from St. Louis to Brownsville, Pa., and along the Monongahela by steamboat, across the Alleghenics to Cumberland, Md., by stages, and thence by rail to Washington. In the latter city his uncle, Aylett Buckner, a member of Congress from Kentucky, was then domicilcd opposite the Treasury Department, with Giddings, Greeley, Lincoln, and Richardson, while Clay, Douglas, Crittenden, and other famous men of the period were frequent visi- tors. When Mcssrs. Lincoln and Buckner went to Philadelphia to attend as delegates the convention which nominated Gen. Taylor for the Presidency, R. A. Barret accompanied them.

Having obtained the degrees of M.A. and M.D., the latter from the Missouri Medical College, March, 1854, Mr. Barret went to Europe and studied at Bon, Munich, and Heidelberg, being awarded the

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degree of Ph.D. He belonged to the Swabia " Burschenschaft," and traveled on foot up and down the Rhine, and through the " Phalz" and " Swartz- wald," and much of Italy, France, and Spain. For some time he acted as secretary of legation at Paris under John Y. Mason, minister at the court of Na- poleon III. In 1859, having returned to the United States, he was admitted to the bar of St. Louis, and entered into the practice of the law with his uncle, Aylett Buckner. He was immediately engaged with Stephen T. Logan and Milton Hay, of Springfield, Ill., in a suit in which the Hanks, of Decatur, Ill., the relatives of Abraham Lincoln, were interested, and he greatly enjoyed the witty and pointed stories, the cheerful conversation, and the familiar courtesy of the future President.

In the winter of 1859-60, Mr. Barret was em- ployed, with Messrs. Blocker, Gurley, and Coke, now United States senator, in settling disputes as to the eleven-league Galindo claim, near Waco, McLernan Co. In May, 1860, his father died, leaving a dis- tracted and scattered business, and a young and expensive family to his care. About this time the political skies became overcast with the clouds of the impending war, and in the agitation which followed Mr. Barret bore an active and influential part. He at once took firm ground in favor of the Union cause, and became a close and intimate friend of Capt. Na- thanicl Lyon, who was looked up to as the leader of the anti-secession element. Mr. Barret was one of the leading actors in the Southwestern campaign, being attorney for the United States government in the offices respectively of Gen. Farrar, general super- visor of confiscated and contraband property ; Col. James O. Broadhead, city provost-marshal ; and Gen. E. B. Alexander, United States provost-marshal for Missouri. He also acted as chief clerk and private secretary to the latter until April, 1866. Mr. Barret . was thrown into contact with the leaders on both sides, and was personally acquainted with Governor Reynolds and Gens. Frost, Jeff Thompson, Buckner, and Price (the last two being his relatives), whom he believes to have been actuated by unselfish and patri- otic though mistaken motives, together with many other active participants in the exciting scencs of that stormy period.

Mr. Barret wrote several reports of the fairs of the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association, which were published in book form, and did much to popularize the association and advance its interests. In 1866 he went to Burlington, Iowa, to settle up his father's estate, and there purchased and edited tlie Gazette and Argus, the oldest paper in the State.

With Henry W. Starr and J. G. Foote, he was sent as a delegate to the Des Moines Rapids Convention at St. Louis, which resulted in the building of the Keo- kuk and Nashville Canal, and was selected by the State of Iowa, together with Gen. A. C. Dodge, formerly United States senator and minister to Spain, Governor Gear, and Judge Edmonds, of Illinois, to urge upon the business men and capitalists of St. Louis the im- portance of the St. Paul and St. Louis Air-Line Rail- road. On this occasion the Burlington Hawkeye said, " Mr. Barret is entitled to the thanks of our people for his untiring efforts and success in directing public attention to this important road."

Mr. Barret has been a lifelong member of the Turner Association, and is an ardent advocate of physical culture, having delivered addresses before the Turners at Hyde Park, Burlington, Iowa, in com- pany with Theo. Gulich, Governor Stone, and Sena- tor James W. Grimes, and at Peoria, Ill., with At- torney-General (" Bob") Ingersoll, of Illinois. He is a member of the old " Central Verein," from which so many Union soldiers were recruited in St. Louis during the spring and summer of 1861, and served on the finance and citizens' committees for the great " Turnfest" of 1881.

From 1869 to 1872, Mr. Barret was editor-in-chief of the St. Louis Dispatch, and afterward commercial and then city editor of the St. Louis Times. He was also private secretary to his brother, Mayor Arthur B. Barret, and to Mayor James H. Britton.

Mr. Barret married Miss Mary Finney, daughter of the late William Finney, one of the earliest set- tlers and most prominent citizens and merchants of St. Louis. He prefers a quiet life, removed from the bustle and confusion of the world, and of late his private affairs and his library have been " dukedom large enough."

Samuel B. Churchill came to St. Louis in 1835. He was born in Louisville in 1812, a lineal descend- ant of the famous Churchill family of Virginia, and connected by blood or marriage with the Armisteads, the Carters, the Turners, Harrisons, Oldhams, and many other of the proudest familes of colonial and Revolutionary days. Col. Churchill practiced law but two years. He was in law partnership with Ferdi- nand Risk. After 1837 journalism and politics oc- cupicd his entire time. Sympathizing with the South, he was arrested and imprisoned in 1861, and in 1863 was ordered to leave the State. He returned to Ken- tucky, took a prominent part in politics there, serving as Secretary of State from 1867 to 1872.

Shepard Barclay was born in St. Louis, Nov. 3, 1847. He is the grandson of Elihu H. Shepard,

Shepard Barclay

ENIFANY U. 14E UNIVERSITY OF LEINS.

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one of the pioneers of St. Louis, who for many years was the leading school-teacher of the city. Mr. Bar- clay began his education at the public schools and High School of St. Louis, and afterwards attended St. Louis University, where he was graduated in 1867. He next attended the University of Virginia, at Char- lottesville, Va., and was graduated with high honors in 1869. He then visited Europe, and studied civil law for two sessions at the University of Berlin, Prussia. During his sojourn on the continent he ac- quired the French and German languages. He then returned to St. Louis, and began the practice of law June 1, 1872. During his early practice he was con- nccted professionally with the press of St. Louis, as editorial contributor, and manifested decided aptitude for the calling.

In 1873 he formed a law partnership with W. C. Marshall, and in that connection continued to practice law until elected circuit judge, Nov. 7, 1882.

Mr. Barclay has been connected with and has suc- cessfully managed some of the most important cases that have come before the courts. A ripe scholar, an able, faithful, diligent, and untiring lawyer, patient, polite, energetic, careful, and honest, lie seems by na- ture, education, and experience eminently fitted for the judgeship, and his friends confidently expect from him a brilliant record on the bench.

Joseph G. Lodge was born in Gloucester County, N. J., Jan. 27, 1840; was educated in Gloucester County and at Chester, Pa .; at the age of ninetcen taught school, continuing in this occupation for nearly two years, and in 1860-62 attended the law school of Michigan University at Ann Arbor. He also took at this institution a partial course in the senior class of the Literary Department. In 1862 he graduated in the law school with the honors of his class, having been chosen orator. He then spent a year in a law-office at Detroit, and in 1863 removed to Battle Creek, Mich. On his arrival in that town he was poor and unknown, but soon made friends and rapidly acquired a lucrative practice. He was elected to several offices, the most important that of prosecuting attorney for the county, in which capacity he managed many intri- cate cascs, and was generally very successful, although he often had to contend with some of the leading lawyers of Michigan. He retained this office four ycars, having been re-elected for a second term.

In October, 1866, he married Miss Mary S. Sailer, of Gloucester County, N. J., and in October, 1871, removed to St. Louis. Here, as in Michigan, he began as an entire stranger, but he again quickly built up a large and lucrative practice as a criminal lawyer. While practicing mostly in the criminal

courts, he has had many important civil cases, and in both fields has shown himself an able advocate. At present he is a member of the legal firm of John- son, Lodge & Johnson, which is generally conceded to be one of the first in the West. In 1882 he was a candidate on the Republican ticket for judge of the Criminal Court, but owing to dissensions in the party was defeated. Industrious, faithful, attentive, and with broad and comprehensive views, he is an earn- est and forcible advocate, but his analytical mind makes him perhaps more effective in the argument of legal propositions before a court than in the dis- cussion of questions of fact before a jury.

The bar of St. Louis at the present day, as re- flected in its living and active members, both those upon the shady side of the hill and those who are climbing to the summit, is not unworthy in any re- spect of the distinguished ancestry whose faint out- line has been traced in the preceding pages. The profession holds out the same high rewards to honor- able industry, cultivated talents, probity and integrity, and our contemporaries toil with an inherited zeal and compete with an ardor transmitted through unbroken generations for the same sort of distinction as that which compensated Easton and Hempstead, Carr and Benton, the Bateses, the Bartons, the Gambles, and other illustrious men. Those who lightly pretend to believe that the bar of St. Louis has degenerated are not familiar with its past, or have neglected to meas- ure the stature of its present greatness. They may not have forgotten Gibson, Hitchcock, the Glovers, Broadhead, Henderson, and others of national repu- tation, but they do not sufficiently take into account such mncn as D. Robert Barclay, H. A. and A. C. Clover, R. Graham Frost, James S. Garland, Joseph R. Harris, Waldo P. Johnson, Edward P. Lindley, and many others.1

It will be seen, from what has been set forth above, that the bar of St. Louis was never, even in the most primitive times of its history, what is called a " country bar," where the simple disputes of rustics are adjudicated in an unpretentious, rural fashion, and the calibre of judges and counsel is as light in weight as the causes brought to trial. Where the missiles are mountains and hills, the giants must be called in to throw them. The big lawyers of the country-those who felt that they could become big, that is-went to Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, because the big fees were there which they

1 The author endeavored without result to obtain the ma- terial for biographical sketches of Henry Hitchcock, Samuel T. Glover, and other Icading members of the bar, whose modesty forbade them to supply the necessary facts.

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grasped at. So when a class of fledgling doctors graduates, the youth who is content to " tote" around his saddle-bags and pill-box all his life, because he has no greater faith in his own capacity, gets him away to some rural district, where the doctors are as few and far off as possible, but the really ambitious " saw- bones" seeks the heart of the great city, where he knows that one critical case well conducted will bring him into lucrative practice. The fees in any good fat land case in St. Louis County, paid in land, were often a fortune to the lawyer who won the case, or, if not, they pointed the way to fortune ; for the people took an immense and enthusiastic interest in courts and law-suits, and attended upon prominent trials as one would go to the circus or the theatre. A murder trial or a land suit would bring a whole county, a whole circuit, to the county-seat. Thus the lawyers were always in the public eye, and their merits and achievements instantly known ; and in this way the St. Louis lawyer constantly had the two greatest possible incentives to endeavor by which man can be urged on,-large profits, and the sincere applause of multitudes.

In this respect the Western courts were as different as possible from those in the East. Hon. Oliver H. Smith, some time United States senator from Indiana, in his very entertaining volume, " Early Trials in In- diana," notes this difference forcibly. The people of the West in those early days, he says, thought " the holding of a court a great affair. They came hun- dreds of miles to see the judges and hear the lawyers ' plead,' as they called it. On one occasion there came to be tried before the jury an indictment for an assault and battery against a man for pulling the nose of another, who had insulted him. The court-room was filled to suffocation. There were two associate judges on the bench. The evidence and the pleadings were heard with breathless expectation, and when the case was concluded, the people returned home to tell their children that they had heard the lawyers 'plead.' How different this," continues Mr. Smith, from a scene witnessed by him in Baltimore in 1828, when he visited the United States court-room there and got a seat from the United States marshal. "There was a venerable judge on the bench, a lawyer addressing the court, another taking notes of his speech. These three and the marshal composed every person but my- self in the room. They were all strangers. I asked the marshal who they werc. ' The judge,' he said, ' is Chief Justice Marshall, the gentleman addressing the court is William Wirt, and the one taking notes is Roger B. Taney,'-three of the most distingwished men in the United States, and yet in a city of fifty thou-

sand souls they were unable to draw to the court- room a single auditor." Mr. Smith seems utterly unconscious of the fact that they were not there to " draw."

This necessity of Western eloquence, " drawing," has been very slow to change, if it has disappeared entirely now. Nor have the busy people quite ceased to be drawn ; at least such was the case down to a re- cent epoch. We do not wish to seem libelous, and hence will not vouch for the tradition that in Lex- ington, Ky., upon occasion of the second trial of one of the Shelbys for murder, in 1846, the trustees of the Methodist Church seriously and urgently debated as to whether or not a great strawberry and ice-cream festival of the church, to which weeks of labor and preparation had been given, should not be adjourned to a later day, to enable the people to go hear the great Henry Clay "plead." And in the interesting ac- count, quoted from on a previous page, from the pen of Charles Gibson, descriptive of the great St. Louis venue of 1850, when MM. les Comtes de Montes- quieu were tried for the murder of Kirby Barnum and Albert Jones, we discover that this personal in- terest in trials still at that day pervaded the whole community. "The trial," says Mr. Gibson, " was largely attended, not merely by our best citizens, but nearly the whole of the spacious apartment was filled by the most refined and aristocratic ladies, old and young, of the city." The writer adds, in the true regretful spirit of a laudator temporis acti, that " the contrast between a great criminal trial thirty years ago, in which the entire community took a profound interest, and the proceedings of the present day in the Four Courts has to be seen in order to be under- stood and fully appreciated."

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History of Saint Louis City and County, from the earliest periods to the present day: including biographical sketches of representative men, Part 113

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898 Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts Number of Pages: 1358

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1358