USA > Missouri > Cole County > Jefferson City > The Bench and bar of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and other Missouri cities : biographical sketches > Part 8
USA > Missouri > St Louis County > St Louis City > The Bench and bar of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and other Missouri cities : biographical sketches > Part 8
USA > Missouri > Jackson County > Kansas City > The Bench and bar of St. Louis, Kansas City, Jefferson City, and other Missouri cities : biographical sketches > Part 8
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In 1868 Mr. ('Neill was one of the delegates at large from the state of Iowa in the democratic national convention which was held in Tammany Hall, New
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York, and resulted in the nomination of Seymour and Blair for president and vice-president of the United States. He was also an elector-at-large for the state during the same year, having been appointed to that place by the central com- mittee of the state, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mr. Claggett, who resigned to run for congress in the Keokuk district. He stumped the state during the campaign. He is a fluent speaker, a strong debater, with a modicum of Irish wit, and makes a splendid canvass.
In 180g Mr. O'Neill came to Saint Louis, where he is still in the successful practice of his profession. Until recently he was in partnership with Robert W. Jones, who is now a journalist in southwestern Missouri. Mr. O'Neill is engaged in the practice alone at present. He is a diligent and prompt business man, and eminently trustworthy.
Mr. O'Neill's wife died in 1864, and is buried near Dubuque. She left six children, one son and five daughters. The eltest, Josephine V., is the widow of John Reynolds, formerly of Madison, Wisconsin. The second, Isabel A., joined the religious order of Saint Dominic, and is now the superior of a branch of the sisters of that order at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and known in religion as Sister Maurice. The third, John IL., Jr., is engaged in the real-estate business in Saint Louis with Robert J. Lucas Emily D. and Edith E. (twins) and Catherine Blanche are at home. All of the above named children (except the Dominican sister), together with the two little daughters of the widow, are living with their father in Saint Louis.
HON. RICHARD GRAHAM FROST.
R ICHARD GRAHAM FROST, Lite member of congress from the third Mis- souri district, was born in Samt Louis. December 29, 1851. His father, Daniel Marsh Frost, is a native of New York, and was an officer of the United States army, and is yet living, his home being in Saint Louis. His mother was Eliza Graham, daughter of Richard Graham, aide de camp to General Harrison in 1812-14. She died in this city in 1872
Our subject was educated in the London (England) University, and Saint John's College, a Catholic institution at Fordham, New York, being graduated in 1872. He studied his profession in the Saint Louis Law School, and was admitted to the bar at the January term of the supreme court in 1874. He is in general practice in the civil courts only, and is ot the firm of Frost and Clardy, his part- ner being Hon. Martin L. Clardy, member of congress from the tenth district.
Since commencing practice Mr. Frost has been much engaged in congres- sional and other political duties, and has had little time, until recently, to devote to his profession. The cases to which he had given his attention were of import- ance, and all of them were handled, not only successfully, but with such signal ability as to claim the close attention of the bench and bar of this city. His his- tory as a lawyer is yet largely to be made.
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Mr. Frost was a candidate for congress on the democratic ticket in 1876, and was defeated by Hon. Lyne S. Metcalfe; was elected in 1878, reflected in 1880, and declined to serve longer than the two terms. He was the youngest member of the lower house of congress.
He is judge advocate general on the governor's staff, with rank of brigadier general. Few men of his age in the state have been pushed forward by friends more rapidly than Mr. Frost, and he modestly fills every position to which he has been elevated.
Mr. Frost was married April 20, 1874, to Latty, daughter of Ferdinand Ken- nett, of this city, and they have five children.
JOHN ROY MUSICK.
KIRKSVILLE.
T HE subject of this sketch was born in Saint Louis county, February 28, 1849. Ilis father was Ephraim J. Musick, a farmer; his grandfather on his father's side was Abraham Musick, a soldier in the war of 1812-14, and an officer in a regiment of rangers in some of the Indian wars. His great-grandfather was a soldier in the war of the revolution. The Musick family emigrated from Vir- ginia to Missouri at an early day, and settled in Saint Louis county, then almost a wilderness. The mother of John R. Musick was formerly a Miss Mary Prince, from Kentucky; her father, Levi Prince, was from Holland.
John R. Musick was the second child, the oldest being a daughter. In 1851 the family came to Adair county. In his childhood days he had few advan- tages of schools, there never being more than two or three months' school in the year, and that in a log schoolhouse a mile or two away. In 1860 the family returned to Saint Louis county, and after a sojourn there of thirteen months once more removed to Adair county. During the four years' war of the rebellion John was kept out of school, but procuring books he studied at home, unaided by any teacher. He entered the district school as soon as he could, and in 1869 became a student at the normal school at Kirksville, where he was graduated in June, 1874, with second honors of his class and the degree of bachelor of science. He taught school at Fee Fee, near the city of Saint Louis, during the autumn of 1874; but his father dying, he returned to his home, then in Kirksville. For six months during the year 1875 he was editor and publisher of a weekly newspaper in that town. Having for some time been a law student during his leisure moments, Mr. Musick entered the office of Henry F. Millan, in Kirksville, in the latter part of 1875, to complete the study.
June 13, 1876, he was married to Miss Augusta P. Roszell, the daughter of a Methodist Episcopal minister, and in October of the same year licensed by Judge John W. Henry, now on the supreme bench of Missouri, to practice law. Ile went at once into the practice, and although there was a general paralysis of
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business, succeeded very well. In 1877 he was appointed a commissioner of the United States circuit court for the eastern district of Missouri by Judge John F. Dillon, of the United States circuit court. In 1878 he formed a partnership with Francis M. Harrington, one of the best lawyers in northern Missouri. But Mr. Musick had had a taste for fiterature trom early childhood, and wrote for amuse- ment during his leisure moments. In 1878 he contributed a serial story to Potter's American Monthly Magazine, of Philadelphia, entitled " Herbert Orton, or Justice Courts in the West," which elicited considerable comment from the press. The story gives the trials, and final triumphs by perseverance, of a young lawyer. Mr. Musick contributed anonymously and under nomme de plume to many of the lead- ing periodicals, and Frank Tousey, a New York publisher, becoming favorably impressed with some of these sketches, found out the address of the author, and wrote for him to come to New York. He did so, and there Mr. Tousey engaged him to write for his publishing house at a salary far exceeding his law practice. May 29, 1882, he retired from the firm of Harrington and Musick, and engaged wholly in literary pursuits. As a lawyer he succeeded well, and only quit the practice to enter a field more congenial to his taste. He lives in Kirksville, but spends much of his time in New York city and Boston. "The Banker of Bed- ford," published by D. Lothrop and Co., of Boston, is said to be his best work of fiction. Many of his stories are of the practice of the law. He has another book in press, the title of which is unknown.
WILLIAM O. L. JEWETT. SHALBINA.
W ILLIAM ORRINGTON LUNT JEWETT, lawyer and journalist, was born at Bowdoinham, Mame, December 27, 1837. His father, Rev. Sam- uel Jewett, a Methodist minister, was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, the son of a revolutionary soldier; and his mother, Sophronia Iluckins, was a native of New Hampshire,
William finished his literary education at the Aurora Seminary, Illinois, and obtained his legal education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, teaching school both before and after finishing his legal studies. He was admitted to practice in 1866; had an office a short time at Mount Sterling, Illinois, and in 1867 settled in Shelbina, where he soon built up a good practice. He is an ener- getic and reliable man, attending carefully to all business intrusted to him by his clients.
In 1861 Mr. Jewett went into the army, in the 39th Illinois infantry, and was discharged on account of disability in January, 1863. Recovering, he enlisted in battery C, ist Illinois artillery, being mustered out in June, 1865.
Mr. Jewett has served as prosecuting attorney of his county two terms, and may have held other offices which we do not recall. In 1881 he purchased an
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interest in the Shelbina "Democrat," the oldest newspaper in Shelby county, and he is its political editor, making it a strong and influential exponent of the prin- ciples of his party.
Mr. Jewett is a member of the encampment in Odd-Fellowship, and has been a delegate repeatedly to the Grand Lodge and the Grand Encampment of the state. He was married in June, 1800, to Miss Ella Cox, of Shelby county, and they have lost one daughter in infancy, and have six children living, three sous and three daughters.
Mr. Jewett takes a warm interest in all local enterprises, and personally and by pen does all he can to build them up. He is, and has been for years, a trus- tee of the Shelbina Collegiate Institute, a school that is doing an excellent work, and is quite prosperous. He is quite public spirited, and ready for almost any respectable business, including that of orator on the Fourth of July and political speech making.
ROBERT CRAWFORD. SALVE LOUIS.
T THE parents of this gentleman were relatives of several very prominent fami- lies at the South, particularly in Virginia, Georgia and Alabama. His father, Nelson A. Crawford, a Virginian by birth, and an Alabama planter, was a second cousin of Hon. William H. Crawford, once candidate for president of the United States; a cousin of Hon. George W. Crawford, once governor of Georgia and United States senator; of Hon. William L. Yancey, once a member of con- gress from Alabama, and General R. E. Rodes, of the confederate army, killed at Winchester. Nathan Crawford, the great grandfather of Robert, was a revolu- tionary soldier. The mother of Robert, before her marriage, was Julia Penn, a native of Richmond, Virginia; a relative of William Penn, the pioneer Quaker in Philadelphia; a daughter of James Penn, a lawyer in Richmond, and a grand- daughter of Gabriel Penn, also a lawyer, and a revolutionary soldier. She was also a granddaughter, on her mother's side, of Colonel Richard Callaway, of Kentucky, an associate of Colonel Daniel Boone.
Mr. Crawford was born in Tuskaloosa county, Alabama, February 12, 1835; was educated at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, graduating in 1858; read law at Eutaw, Alabama, with William P. Webb; was admitted to the bar in 1859, and March 19, 1860, was united in marriage with Miss Frances E. Webb, a daughter of his preceptor. She is a cousin of Hon. William II. Forney, member of congress from Alabama, and Major General John H. Forney, late of the con- lederate army,
Mr. Crawford commenced practice at Eutaw in 1859, and remained there till 1874, serving meantime as an officer in the confederate army from 1861 to 1865 ..
In 1874 Mr. Crawford came to St. Louis, and during the last nine years has worked his way into a very respectable practice, civil and criminal, extending to
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all the courts. He is conscientious, painstaking and true to the interests of his clients, and has the fullest confidence of the community. He is a sound lawyer, a man of gentlemanly bearing, of high moral character, and of most excellent influence in society.
Mr. and Mrs. Crawford have a family of seven children. They are members of the Presbyterian Church, and have a good standing in the social circles of the city. Mrs. Crawford is a granddaughter of Hon. Henry Y. Webb, first judge of the supreme court of Alabama.
It is not improper to here add that Mrs. Commodore Vanderbilt is a daughter of Hon. Robert I. Crawford, an uncle of the subject of this sketch, and that she has in press a work on the Crawford family.
ANDREW MCKINLEY.
SAINT LOUIS.
T IIE gentleman with whose name we head this sketch is a son of the late Hon. John Mckinley, an associate justice of the supreme court of the United States, appointed by President Van Buren in 1837, and serving until his death. Judge Mckinley was an eminent jurist, a native of Virginia, and a son of Doctor Andrew MeKinley, who was a surgeon in the revolutionary army and of Scotch-Irish lineage.
The mother of our subject was Julia Ann ( Bryan) Mckinley, a native of Phila- delphia, and daughter of a large East India merchant.
Mr. Mckinley was born in Lexington, Kentucky, October 10, 1817; was edu- cated at the Nashville University, being nearly ready to take his degree when his father removed to Kentucky: he graduated in the law department of Transylva- nia University, Lexington, Kentucky, receiving his diploma in the spring of 1810. In June of that year he came to Saint Louis, and July 27, 1844o, was admitted to the bar. After practicing his profession in this city about five years, Mr. Mckinley returned to Kentucky, located at Louisville, practiced his profession there for three of four years, and was register of the land office from 1854 to 1859.
In April, 1859, Mr. Mckinley returned to Saint Louis, and for some years was president of the Great Republic Life Insurance Company and trustee of the east- ern division of the Union Pacific railroad, and held other important positions. In February, 1865, Mr. Mckinley removed to New York city. In 1872 he became once more a resident of Saint Louis, and evidently intends to remain in this his favorite home.
To Mr. Mckinley is ascribed the credit of creating, laying out and beautifying Forest Park. Having first secured the passage of a bill for its charter, he was the first and only president of the commission of that park from the time it was opened until the city authorities look charge of it under the present city charter. His untiring devotion to the work of its construction and embellishment, is
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generally recognized by the people of St. Louis. A Saint Louis paper says : "That a scheme so fertile in results, involving such a large outlay, and perti- naciously opposed by strong combinations, was carried through in a year of finan- cial panic; that the act was passed when the pressure of a financial revulsion was severest, and that the money was asked for when commercial credit was utterly disrupted for the time, is only to be ascribed to the rare knowledge of men and sound judgment which, in the person of Mr. McKinley, urged forward a move- ment of such deep import to every denizen of our city. He was known to be benevolent and public-spirited; his acquaintance was large, his friends devoted to him, and his reputation was unsullied."
Mr. Mckinley, in his address at the opening of the park, used the following language: "Its conception was due to Hiram W. Leffingwell, then, as now, one of its most enthusiastic friends, and from the date of its organization a member of the present board." Mr. Leffingwell, in a recent conversation, remarked: " If I may be regarded as the father of Forest Park, Andrew Mckinley was its savior."
" It has probably never before occurred that one man has, after the failure of an important enterprise, reconstructed a bill which had been declared to be unconstitutional, conformed it to the views of a legislative body, and conducted it, through much opposition from influential parties, to its passage by a trium- phant majority; then that he should have been made the executive officer of a board of such importance as that of Forest Park, and so administered his trust as in policy and detail to have met the approbation of the public.
When the embellishment of the park had so far progressed as to excite the curiosity and tempt the hopes of the people of Saint Louis, Mr. Mckinley saw that something further was needed, and in the year succeeding the passage of the bill for Forest Park, drafted and secured the passage of the boulevard bill. When the cooperation of the property owners was needed he accepted for himself and for them an invitation of leading citizens of Chicago to inspect the boulevard system of that city, where a large party were royally entertained, and the fact that broad drives enhanced the value of the property fronting on them, in greater proportion than the value of the land donated, was fully demonstrated. This series of movements resulted in giving to Saint Louis three broad avenues and two magnificent boulevards, without a dollar of expense to either city or county."
During the last four years Mr. Mckinley has been president of the state board of immigration, in which position his business capacities and efficiency are seen to good advantage.
The speeches made by Mr. Mc Kinley at the opening of Forest Park and the Saint Louis bridge, and published at the time, show him to be a man of much literary taste, of elegant diction, and stamp him as a man of enterprise and enthusiasm for public improvements. Some of his poetic effusions contributed to the New York and local press indicate that he has no inconsiderable talent for metrical composition.
Mr. Mckinley was married in 1843 to Miss Mary Wilcox, of Saint Louis, Mis-
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souri, daughter of Mrs. Elizabeth Ashley, wife of General William II. Ashley, and afterward wife and widow of Hon. J. J. Crittenden, of Kentucky. He has just celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his marriage, and has three sons and three daughters.
HON. EDWARD BATES. SHAP LOUIS.
E DWARD BATES, the great lawyer and peerless rhetorician in his day at the Saint Louis bar, first saw the light in Belmont, Virginia, September +, 1793. In 1814 he came to Missouri, has older brother, Frederick Bates, being sec- retary of the territory. Here Edward read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1810. He soon began to rise in his profession, and political honors, one after another, were heaped upon him. He was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1820; was a member of the first legislature, in 1822; was appointed United States attorney for the Missouri district in 1824; was elected to congress in 1827; was sent to the state senate in 1830 and 1834; was offered a place in President Fillmore's cabinet in 1850; was elected a judge of the Saint Louis land court in 1853; was president of the whig national convention in 1856, and was attorney general in Mr. Lincoln's cabinet from March, 1861, until his resig. nation, two years afterward. He was also president of the internal improvement convention held in Chicago in 1866, and there electrified the statesmen of this country and of Canada with his grand oratorical flights, as well as pleased all the members of the convention with his perfect mastery of parliamentary rules, and his statesman-like utterances. He was an easy, ready debater, and, like Charles James Fox, richly endowed with elocutionary graces. As a lawyer, he stood in the front rank in Missouri for forty years.
He was married in 1823, and died in Saint Louis in March, 1860, leaving a large family of children. A bronze statue of him stands in Forest Park, and his name is embalmed in the memory of hundreds of thousands of friends all over the country.
HON. JAMES S. GREEN.
T' HE late James S. Green, one of the few men who, like Abraham Lincoln. could successfully debate with Stephen A. Douglas, and who at one period was one of the brightest ornaments of the Missouri bar, hailed from the Old Do- minion, where he was born in 1817. Like Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Green carly foraged for his education on the underbrush of science; like Mr. Lincoln he was a self- educated man, and a great lawyer, and unlike Mr. Lincoln, he turned traitor to his country, and voluntarily signed his own political death warrant.
Mr. Green came into this state when about twenty years old, farmed for a few
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seasons, and possibly may have split rails; studied law, practiced several years in Lewis county, was a member of the constitutional convention in 1845, and helped revise the constitution; was elected to congress in 1846, and reflected in 1848, he being at that period and always a state-nights, Calhoun democrat; was sent as chargé to Bogota, by President Pierce in 1553, but soon resigned and returned home; was once more elected to congress in 1856, but before that body met he was elected to the senate, and left the latter body by expulsion for disloyalty, early in the year 1861. In logical powers he stood among the abler class of men in the upper house, but his disloyaly was his political ruin. When the rebellion, of which he was an energetic supporter, was over, he settled in Saint Louis. His health gradually gave way, and he died in January, 1870. A gentleman formerly on the beach, and now in practice at the Saint Louis bar, recently expressed to the writer the opinion that James S. Green was one of the soundest and ablest lawyers that have appeared at the bar of Saint Louis in the last quarter of a century.
HON. HAMILTON ROWAN GAMBLE. SUAT LOUIS.
T HE provisional governor of Missouri, during the civil war, whose name we have placed at the head of this sketch, was born in Winchester county, Vir- ginia, in November, 1798. His grandfather was from Ireland. He received most of his mental drill at Hampton Sidney College, Prince Edward county, and was admitted to the bar in Virginia, Tennessee and Missouri before he was twenty-one years old We do not think he opened an office in his native state, and he was but a few months in practice in Tennessee. He came to Missouri territory in isi8; soon settled in Franklin, Howard county, and in 1824 was appointed secretary of state by Governos Bates. Mr Gamble soon afterward settled in Saint Louis, and at no distant late became a star of the first magni- tude among the legal lights of this city. He was more of a logician than orator, and his argument in any case usually covered the whole ground, and left little for anybody else to say. Yet he was not prolix; he had great condensing powers, and every point made was a clincher.
Mr. Gamble was a member of the legislature in 1846-7, and took a seat on the bench of the supreme court of the state in isst, and was presiding justice for three of four years. He resigned in 1855, his disposition inclining to private life. His abilities as a jurist were conceded by all who knew him. In politics he was a whig.
When civil war broke out, early in 1861, Judge Gamble took the patriotic shoot, and made rousing speeches on the Union side. When the rebel governor, Jackson, was deposed from office, our subject was made provisional governor (the summer of 1861), and the history of his able administration may be found in the exciting history of Missouri at that period.
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Judge Gamble was married, in 1827, to a Miss Coulter, who was an accom- plished lady from South Carolina, and he died in this city, January 31, 1864, while civil war was still raging in the land. He rested in peace, and so did his country, in the following year.
HON. LOUIS GOTTSCHALK.
SAINT LOUIS.
QUIS GOTTSCHALK, late judge of the Saint Louis circuit court, was born in Ems, Germany, January 1, 1836, being a son of Charles and Margaret (Luther) Gottschalk. The family emigrated to the United States in 1849. Mr. Gottschalk read law in the city of New York and Dubuque, Iowa, and was ad- mitted to the bar in the latter city in 1850. In 1858 he settled in Saint Louis, which has since been his home and the scene of his success at the bar and on the bench.
Mr. Gottschalk served in the army for nearly two years, as captain of com- pany B, 5th Missouri infantry; was elected city attorney in 1863; a member of the city council in 1866; a member of the senate in 1869, and became its presi- dent in 1871. While holding the last named office he was also acting governor, Lieutenant Governor Gravely having died, and the governor, B. Gratz Brown, running for vice-president of the United States. In 1875 Mr. Gottschalk was a member of the constitutional convention, and while at his post of duty in that body was elected a judge of the Saint Louis circuit court, which office he held until January 1, 1879. He has a thorough understanding of the law, and on the bench showed himself to be clear-headed, cool and impartial, and he was quite popular with the bar. Since leaving the bench Judge Gottschalk has been very actively engaged in the practice of his profession, his business being first-class.
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