USA > Missouri > The history of the bench and bar of Missouri : With reminiscences of the prominent lawyers of the past, and a record of the law's leaders of the present > Part 20
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Mr. Ball has been the City Attorney of Montgomery City, but resigned before his term expired. In November, 1896, he was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Montgomery County and is still the incumbent of that office. So far his term has been distinguished by excel- lent management of the office and a conscientious regard for the interest of the public. He still continues private practice and has built up a clientele consisting of the better element of litigants, one of these being the Union Savings Bank of Montgomery City, for which he acts as the regular attorney.
Mr. Ball is physically robust and mentally energetic and quick. Judge E. M. Hughes, now on the bench of that circuit, who is a good and conservative judge of men, considers him possessed of a fine legal mind and one destined to greatly develop and expand profes- sionally as time passes. He is careful, conscientious and honest, and is very popular both with the bar and people. He might be considered a good all-around lawyer and is well adapted to a condition which compels versatility in his line of work. His practice is both civil and criminal and in either department he is alert and skillful. A notable case in his legal career was that of Marshall vs. Wabash Railway. Under this style Mr. Ball and his brother brought the first suit in this State to establish the right of a mother to recover for the negligent killing of a bastard child. A record of the case will be found in Missouri Reports, 120.
He is sensible of the duty every good citizen owes his town, and in all civic enter- prises takes an active part. He is a Knight of Pythias, a member of Montgomery Lodge No. 197; is a Democrat and in this respect his principles are straight and unswerving. He has taken an active part in recent campaigns and now takes rank as one of the leaders of the Democracy in Montgomery County.
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On January 13, 1885, Mr. Ball was married to Miss Mary D. Pickens, daughter of William C. and Mary (Campbell) Pickens, of St. Louis. Mrs. Ball is a niece of ex-Gover- nor Robert A. Campbell, of St. Louis. The couple have five children, named as follows: Annie E., ten; David Russell, eight; John Everett, six; Campbell Pickens, three, and Claude Dyer, one.
DAVID A. BALL,
LOUISIANA.
FEW lawyers who appear in this volume are better known throughout the State than Hon. David A. Ball, ex-Lieutenant Governor, ex-State Senator, political leader and lawyer. In his veins flows the blood of two of the oldest and strongest families of Northeast Missouri -the Balls and Dyers, both families being of Virginia origin, but pioneers of Missouri.
Hon. David A. Ball's paternal grandfather, James Ball, was a native of Fauquier County, Virginia, where he followed the vocation of a planter. Sometime in the 'forties he came West with his family and located on a farm near Bridgeton in St. Louis County, but was not long permitted to breathe the air of his new home, as he died in 1850. He left a widow and six children, of whom John Ball, the father of David A., was the eldest child. He was reared on the farm, has followed agriculture all his life, is yet living and is known as one of the successful farmers of Montgomery County, Missouri. As a citizen he has proved his worth to the State not only as a law-abiding supporter of its authority in peace, but as a voluntary and brave soldier in war, being a model in that solid, unpretentious, patriotic class which is the strength and glory of a republic. He is a veteran of both the Mexican and Civil Wars. In the first named contest he served under General Sterling Price. In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, although of Virginian antecedents, he espoused the cause of the Union. In 1861 he organized a militia company, with which he was connected for two years, when he joined the Forty-ninth Missouri, rose to the rank of Captain and with it engaged in many skirmishes and contests, among others the defense of Spanish Fort and Fort Blakely. After his return from the Mexican War he was married, in 1850, in Lincoln County, Missouri, to Elizabeth Dyer, daughter of David Dyer and Nancy Sanimons, his wife, and sister of David P. Dyer, the eminent St. Louis lawyer. To this union was born nine children, named respectively, David, Nettie, James F., John B. M., Galen R., Claude R., Laura, William S. and Edward -seven sons and two daughters. Their mother, like the father, is yet alive and still continues to exert an influence for good. She is a woman of strong character and noble Christian virtues and has been for many years an active member of the " old school " Baptist Church. She was born in Henry County, Vir- ginia, and came with her parents when they migrated West and settled in Lincoln County in 1844. Her father, David Dycr, was a man of influence and standing in the Old Domin- ion. He was a leader in the Whig party, and served a number of terms in both the upper and lower houses of the Virginia Assembly. He also saw military service, being a volunteer of the War of 1812.
David A. Ball was born in Lincoln County, Missouri, June 18, 1851. His youthi was spent on his father's farm, where lic worked in the summer and attended school in the winter. His common school education was obtained under some difficulty, as lic never walked less than three miles to school and sometimes five miles, but he was ambitious even
A Ball
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as a boy, and labored at his books during the hours he was not engaged at other work. When seventeen years old he taught a public school one term, and two years later, in 1870, he went to Louisiana, which has since been his homc. It was about this time that he formed the resolution to enter the law, but feeling that his general education was not as complete as was desirable, he attended two terms of school at Louisiana and in private gave his books more unremitting attention than ever. Compelled to be self-sustaining, he worked in the tobacco factory of A. Tinsley & Co, at that place, when he was not at school. It is a notable fact that as their employe he won the firmn friendship of the wealthy manu- facturers, and that to-day he is the company's legal representative. He studied law with Fagg & Dyer and was admitted to practice at Louisiana in May, 1873, by Judge Gilchrist Porter. He began practice and since that time his rise lias been rapid.
In 1874 he was elected City Attorney of Louisiana and served one year. In 1878 lie was elected Prosecuting Attorney of Pike County, and at the end of liis first term he was elected to another, but refused to serve longer. It is a matter of record that during his four years of public service he never had a case called that he was not ready for trial, and that of the many indictments he formulated and presented, not one was quashed. In 1884 he was accorded one of the highest lionors in the gift of his people, being elected to the State Senate, as the representative of the Eleventh District, composed of the counties of Audrain, Lincoln and Pike. The record of that four years' term served to greatly increase his prestige and gave him a State-wide reputation. During the first session he demonstrated his ability and statesmanlike qualities, which inet a merited recognition when the Senate inet in 1887 and his colleagues elected him President of that body. He showed himself no less skillful as the presiding officer than he had demonstrated his ability as a legislator on the floor. In 1887 Governor John A. Marmaduke died, and by virtue of his position Mr. Ball became Lieutenant Governor, and as such served until 1889. As Senator he did not inerely sit in his seat and cast his ballot when the time came. He assumed an active relation to almost every measure that came before that body while on the floor, and his eloquence generally had a marked bearing on its final disposition.
Nor did his activity stop there. He was one of the originating minds of the Upper House and he was the author of a number of important measures which became laws. One of these was the bill giving the schools uniform text books, which, although it did not become a law at that session, at the next session was taken up and passed. His energy and ability largely contributed to tlie enactinent of just and adequate railroad legislation, in the fight for which he was unrelenting. He also served as Chairman of the Committee to Visit State Institutions, and through the recommendation of his report the Insane Asylum at Nevada, Missouri, was built.
While he has never becn a seeker of office, though his descent and education make him a born political leader, he is above all else a lawyer. While it would be unnatural for one of his birth, education, ability and environment not to be enthusiastically interested in all political matters, the offices lie has held have always been accepted under the urgent persuasion of his fellow-citizens. As a disinterested citizen he has taken an active part in every campaign since he began practice. He has held scores of honorary positions at the hands of the Democratic party, and few conventions of that party-State, district or county - have been hield in recent years to which he was not a delegate. In 1882, elected a member of the State Democratic Committee, he was by that body made one of the Executive Committee and as such his political genius contributed in no small share
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toward electing a solid Democratic delegation to Congress. Although in the last seven or eight years the volume of his legal business has increased to that extent that he has been compelled to abate in some measure his political activity, he was a candidate for Governor in 1896 and failed of the nomination by a small vote after a sixty days campaign.
Mr. Ball has a reputation both as a civil and criminal lawyer, and has appeared on one side or the other of almost every important case tried in Pike County in recent years. One of the more recent cases of celebrity in which he acted as counsel, was that of Dr. Hearne for the murder of Amos Stillwell of Hannibal, Missouri, in which Mr. Ball appeared as the colleague of the regretted and gifted Nat Dryden.
Mr. Ball has been a member of two legal partnerships. The first was with Hon. Champ Clark, now Congressman from that district. From the business association thus created, sprang a warm personal friendship which continues to this day. In 1891 a part- nership was formed with his old preceptor, Judge T. J. C. Fagg. Later Edwin B. Hicks was admitted and the style of the firm is now Fagg, Ball & Hicks.
Mr. Ball's wife was Miss Jessie Minor, daughter of Samuel O. and Elizabeth (Carter) Minor. While she was born in Pike County, Missouri, her parents came from Albemarle County, Virginia. The marriage took place May 13, 1875. Both Mr. and Mrs. Ball are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and are active in all religious and charitable work.
SHEPARD BARCLAY, SAINT LOUIS.
C' ERTAINLY one of the most eminent interpreters of the law and a man of the highest intellectual culture and development, is Shepard Barclay, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Missouri. He is no less well versed in the field of general knowlege than richly equipped in an understanding of the law's science. By no means the man of white locks and advanced years that might be imagined from his reputation and achievements, but on the contrary, hale and vigorous, and in the ripeness of inan's fullest development and power, it may be well concluded that he has not yet reached the zenith of his career as a jurist.
Nature was kind to Judge Barclay in the heritage she gave him, for his forbears were men and women of the highest virtue, exceptional strength of character and high mental qualities and these splendid results of culture descended to him. One of these ancestors, his maternal grandfather, was Elihu Shepard, who will long be remembered as one of the most influential citizens of St. Louis during a long life, and as one of the pioneers of that city, having settled there in 1818. He was a candidate for Mayor, a Captain in the Mexican War, one of the founders of the Missouri Historical Society and was one of the original promoters of the city's public school system. In his honor the Shepard School is named. It was under the care and influence of this excellent man that the youth of his grandson was largely passed.
The latter was born in St. Louis, November 3, 1847, and under the direction of his grandfather, he received a very superior education. This was begun in the public schools of his native city, continued, to the point of graduation, in St. Louis University, but not there completed, as after his graduation at that institution in 1867, he entered the famed
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University of Virginia at Charlottesville, and there fitted for his professional career, grad- uating from its law department in the class of 1869. Still not being satisfied with anything . short of the fullest possible scholastic training, he went abroad at once and for two terms perfected himself in various branches of knowledge at the celebrated University of Berlin, giving special attention to the study of the civil law. He also became proficient in the French and German languages.
Returning to St. Louis, he was admitted to the bar and began practice, June 1, 1872. For a year or more, while undergoing the "wait " common to the experience of all young attorneys, he did newspaper work, demonstrating the peculiar adaptability for such work, that would have perhaps led to the highest degree of success had it been his determination to follow it. In 1873 he formed a partnership with William C. Marshall, now City Coun- selor of St. Louis, and during the continuation of this association (until the fall of 1882) the business and reputation of the firm increased rapidly. It was during this period that bar and public were brought to a realization of the fact that the present Judge, as a lawyer, was gifted with learning and ability which entitled him to a high rank at the bar of the State. It is noted of him as a practitioner that he was especially skillful in the preparation of a case, and very successful in his practice before the higher courts. The public appre- ciation of his talents was crystallized in 1882 in an election to the bench of the Circuit Court of St. Louis by the largest majority that had been given a judicial candidate in decades. Such discrimination and ability did he display, and such was his grasp of the abstruse problems of the law, that his fellow-citizens in 1888 elevated him to the liigliest judicial position in the State - the Supreme Bench.
His course as a jurist has been characterized by the most sensitive conscientiousness and the most unfaltering fearlessness. He is indeed a "learned Judge." His knowledge of the law is profound, and this superstructure is based on a foundation of culture and education both wide and deep. His skill in taking the tangled web of an hundred diverse legal facts and of them creating the completed fabric of a strong, clear judicial decision, has been of the highest benefit to his State. Both as lawyer and jurist he deserves to and does rank with the ablest and best of those lawyers and judges worthy of a place in Mis- souri's judicial history.
MACENAS E. BENTON,
NEOSHO.
A GENTLEMAN whose rapid rise to prominence within the past few years is earnest of greater fame in the days to come, is Macenas E. Benton, of Neosho, at this present date (1898) the Representative of the Fifteenth District in the United States Congress. Mr. Benton has achieved success as a lawyer, but largely endowed with the characteristics of his relative, Thomas H. Benton, of whose name Missouri is so proud, lie has shown the highest order of talent as a political leader and publicist, and it is not exaggeration to assume that the Missouri of the future inay remember and claim two Bentons instead of one as conspicuous figures in her history.
Hon. M. E. Benton is a native of Tennessee, having been born in Obion County, Jan- uary 29, 1849. While he was yet an infant he was taken to Dyersburg, in Dyer County, Tennessee, and there he was reared. His education was obtained at two academies of
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West Tennessee and at St. Louis University, St. Louis. When the Civil War began he was little more than twelve years old, but he is nevertheless a veteran of that great struggle. He entered the Confederate Army while he was still but a boy and saw considerable active service.
After the war, he chose the bar as a vocation and received his instruction therefor in the law department of Cumberland University, Tennessee. He graduated in 1870, and at once came to Missouri, settling in the southwestern corner of the State, a quarter then little populated, but which has since developed so wonderfully. He selected Neosho, the judicial seat of Newton County, as the field of activity and has resided there ever since.
His first official position was the Prosecuting Attorneyship of Newton County, to which he was elected in 1878. At the end of his term, in 1882, he declined a re-election. In 1885 he was appointed by President Cleveland, United States District Attorney, being named for office in March of that year. He won distinction during his incumbency, as the original " offensive partisan," his "pernicious activity " in behalf of the Democratic party, earning the especial disfavor of the anableptic powers that exemplified the peculiarly impossible theory of civil service reform, and Mr. Benton was thereupon suspended in July, 1889. He had no apologies to make then for his course, and has made none since, and is, indeed, more "perniciously active " politically than ever before.
It is said of him, that with three exceptions, he has been a delegate to every Dem- ocratic State Convention held in Missouri since 1872. Of the State Conventions of 1890 and 1896 he was the Chairman, and at both presided with dignity and ability. He has served as a member at large on the Democratic State Committee, and was sent by his party in 1896 as a delegate to the National Convention at Chicago, which nominated Bryan for President. There he was elevated to a position of leadership in the delegation and was named as Missouri's representative on the Credentials Committee.
In 1896 Mr. Benton was nominated by his party as candidate for representative in Congress from the Fifteenth District, and was elected by a plurality of over 7,000, the greatest plurality given to any Democratic candidate for Congress in the State in 1896. It may conservatively be considered that the political career of Mr. Benton has only fairly begun. He is one of the most popular men in the State and it is whispered that he can have the Gubernatorial nomination whenever he desires.
WILLIAM H. BIGGS, SAINT LOUIS.
JUDGE WILLIAM H. BIGGS, Associate Justice of the St. Louis Court of Appeals, is a native Missourian, having been born in Clark County, Angust 1, 1842, and is thie son of George K. and Nannie Biggs, whose maiden name was Nannie Floyd. He was given a good education, which was completed at La Grange College, at La Grange, Lewis County, Missouri. The war intervened between his school days and the period of the more arduons dutics of life, and thus it befell that he became a soldier of the Lost Cause, entering the Confederate army in 1861.
After the end of the contest (1866) he returned home and proceeded to carry out the plans, interrupted by the war, of fitting himself for the bar. He entered the office of Judge James Ellison at Canton, Lewis County, Missouri, now like his protege a Justice of the
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Missouri Court of Appeals, Kansas City District, and completed his readings. He was admitted to the bar in 1869 and began practice in Bowling Green, Pike County. In 1873 he removed to Louisiana, in the same county, where during the next sixteen years he built up an excellent practice. Such reputation did he achieve that he finally came to be talked of as a candidate for the bench, though it was several years before he agreed to stand for such honors. In 1888 he was the nominee of the Judicial Convention for the St. Louis Court of Appeals, and was triumphantly elected. Since taking his seat on the bench he has made St. Louis his headquarters.
Judge Biggs' course on the bench has been characterized by discrimination, care and studious investigation of every problem he has been called on to adjudicate. With his able colleagues, Judges Bland and Bond, he lias done his share toward maintaining the high standard of the second highest court in the commonwealth. Judge Biggs is still in the full vigor of middle age and his highest achievements as a jurist may be considered as lying still before him.
In 1870 the Judge was married to Eliza Shotwell, an estimable young lady of Pike County, and they have an interesting family of children.
CHARLES CLELLAND BLAND, SAINT LOUIS.
THE name of Bland is one that has been honorably known in America more years than the Republic has existed, and the men distinguished by it have borne a conspicuous part in the public affairs of the State, and have been noted as the best types of that hardy, intelligent, world-conquering race-the Anglo-Saxon. The family is of English origin, and it is probably due to its characteristic assertiveness and hatred of every form of oppres- sion, that the name was planted in America at an early day. These pioneer first-comers settled in Virginia and the name is interwoven in the history of the Old Dominion, both as Colony and State. Richard Bland was the intimate and friend of Thomas Jefferson, and a inember of the Continental Congress, while many others of the name have hield positions of honor and trust. Another peculiarity of the house is that it has been able to maintain its strength and virility through succeeding generations, with the result that its contempo- rary representatives are mnen calculated to add honor to and be rated the ablest and strong- est of their line.
The father of Judge Charles C. Bland was Stoughten E. Bland, who was born near Lebanon, Kentucky (on the farm where Proctor Knott now resides), and died in 1844. He was a farmer and local preacher, and coming to Hartford, Kentucky, about 1830, there met and married Margaret Nall, a member of an influential pioneer Kentucky family. She sur- vived her husband, dying in 1849. Their son, the subject of this biography, was born at Hartford, Ohio County, Kentucky, on February 9, 1837. He left Kentucky and settled in Arcadia, in Southeast Missouri, about 1850, obtaining his education in the common schools of that town, excepting the last courses, which were completed at Arcadia Academy.
He left school in 1858, and as so inany other Americans who have attained to leader- ship in the various departments of society have done, lie began life as a school teacher. His first school was at Pilot Knob and subsequently he taught the school at Caledonia. In 1859 he went to Prentiss, Mississippi, obtained a school and remained about a year. While
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yet attending school, he had selected the law as his profession, and taught school merely as a means to attain that end. During the two years he acted as instructor, he studied his law text books in spare moments, and this part of his education is exceptional in that it was obtained solely by his own efforts and without the instruction of a regular law school or the advantages to be obtained from reading in the office of a practicing attorney. At the end of the school terin at Prentiss, Mississippi, he returned to Missouri and in April, 1860, at Salem, Dent County, was admitted to practice by Circuit Judge James H. McBride.
Judge Bland practiced in Salem until the beginning of the Civil War. Notwithstand- ing his Southern antecedents, and the fact that in his veins were combined both the blood of Virginia and Kentucky, whose children perhaps more than those of other States of the Union are drawn by a peculiar love to that commonwealth wherein they were born, the young lawyer warinly espoused the cause of the Union. His temperament was of that nature which would not permit him long to remain idle, or having reached a conviction, allow him to accord it a support less strong than the full power of his nature could give, and, therefore, early in the conflict he volunteered his services, and from that time until the close of the war was on almost continuous and active duty. He enlisted as private, in Company D, Thirty-second Missouri Volunteer Infantry, and when it was mustered in, his company elected him as its Captain. He was a participant in the battle of Chickasaw Bayou in December, 1862; was at Arkansas Post, Arkansas, in the same year; was at the siege of Vicksburg in 1863, and was under fire at Jackson, Brandon, Missionary Ridge, Jonesboro (Georgia), and dozens of engagements of lesser note. He served under Sher- man, and Frank P. Blair was the commander of the brigade of which his company was a part. He was at the siege of Atlanta and bravely led his company into at least one-half the battles fouglit by Sherman's army in its march from Chattanooga to the Georgian cap- ital. After the fall of Atlanta, the Thirty-second Regiment was consolidated with the Twenty-first Missouri, and Captain Bland was mustered out under the consolidating order, November 18, 1864.
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