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 38
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94
Mr. Marshall is a member of the Masonic fraternity and the Legion of Honor, and is a Knight of Pythias. He has been a very active Democrat and has rendered his party valuable service. It was he who organized the Young Men's Democratic Association in 1874, of which body he acted as President until 1876. He was likewise one of the organ- izers of the Missouri Democratic Association, of which hic also acted as President. Both organizations were political forces in their day. He lias acted as Chairman of various
267
THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
city conventions, was Temporary Chairman of the Court of Appeals Convention in 1896. For fifteen consecutive years he was Treasurer of the Missouri Bar Association, and is now President of that body, having been elected in 1895.
Mr. Marshall married Katherine Mortimer Reading, of Vicksburg, Mississippi, December, 1876, and two children, both daughters, have blessed the union. Mrs. Mar- shall is the daughter of Abram Beach Reading, of Vicksburg, who, at the opening of the late war was one of the largest iron founders in the South and cast the most effec- tive guns used by the Confederacy in the defense of Vicksburg. After the war he engaged largely in the cotton compress business at New Orleans and Mobile, and was one of the best known men in the South in his day.
Since he has been City Counselor, Mr. Marshall has earned a most enviable reputa- tion because of his knowledge of municipal law. He is a student, and for years he has bent his energies to the mastery of that intricate subject. His thorough understanding of the subject may be seen by a reference to his article on "Municipal Law" in this work.
BENJAMIN ULPIAN MASSEY, SPRINGFIELD.
O NE of the lawyers of Southern Missouri who has long been identified with the history and development of that part of the State is the gentleman whose name heads this sketch. He is thoroughly a lawyer and also a thorough lawyer, and within the law's limits his reputation has been builded. The distractions of politics have never been allowed to interfere with a conscientious professional devotion, but of all measures of a public or quasi-public character of benefit to his town, county or State, he has been a genuine sup- porter and has found time to contribute generously to every inovement of advancement and progress. His consecration to the law, through many years has been abundantly rewarded, and he enjoys the reputation to-day of being one of the most able and successful practi- tioners of Southern Missouri.
Mr. Massey is a native of that part of the State where he has made his reputation, having been born at Sarcoxie, Jasper County, February 28, 1842. On the paternal side he is of English ancestry, the Masseys having settled in Maryland in Colonial times. Benjamin F. Massey, our subject's father, was a inan of strong and virile character and in his time an influential factor in the affairs of Missouri, having been Secretary of State during the stormy days of 1861 and those following. He was born in Kent County, Maryland, in 1811 and came to Missouri some time in the 'thirties. Our subject's mother was Maria Hawkins Withers, daughter of an old family of Virginia, having been born in Fauquier County, in 1822. She came to Missouri with her parents about 1832 and was married to Benjamin F. Massey at Boonville, Missouri, in 1839. The young couple established themselves at Sar- coxie, Missouri, where the country for hundreds of miles in all directions was little more than unbroken prairie and forest, where deer, bear and other game roamned at will. There their son was born in 1842.
The latter was educated in such private country schools as existed at Sarcoxie in the primitive days of the 'fifties and in such private schools as Jefferson City afforded between 1856 and 1860. This schooling was afterward supplemented with much self instruction and an exhaustive and general course of reading. It was during the early period while his
268
THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
father was Seeretary of State that the son attended sehool at Jefferson City, to become later his father's ehief elerk, or assistant Secretary of State. The father by virtue of his offiee was a member of the official family of the courageous and fiery Claib Jackson, then Governor. The son as his father's chief helper was thrown into intimate relations with the publie men of that day, was an active participant in the stormy seenes of those times, and ean therefore now relate many interesting ineidents respeeting the men and events that then made history. His narrative of the evacuation by the State government of Jefferson City, of how it followed Priee's Army South after the battle of Boonville, of the convening of the Legislature at Neosho and the varying fortunes of the great seal of Missouri, is especially interesting. Beeause of their historieal import the facts are here incorporated as Mr. Massey's friends have often heard him relate thein.
In the spring of 1861, the capture of the State Militia at Camp Jackson, in St. Louis, by the Federal troops under the command of General Lyon, caused great excitement at Jefferson City and a eall was made by Governor Jaekson for 75,000 of the volunteer militia to assemble there to protect the State against Federal invasion. It soon became apparent that no sufficient foree could be gathered at the Capital to resist the mareh upon that eity by General Lyon, and so about the first of June it was determined that the State govern- ment should remove, or retreat from Jefferson and carry with them sueli of the records of State as were portable and absolutely necessary to eondnet the State government while it was thus on wheels. In a state of intense anxiety and expectation and in great haste, after dark one night about the 12th of June, such records were paeked in the Secretary's office as had been determined it was necessary to take, and with them the State seal, and carried for coneealment and protection to the residenee of Captain Rogers, an old gentleman who lived in a stone house just baek of the Capitol, inside the corporate limits and up the river from the main part of the town. The seal and records were stored in his house for a day or two, then paeked in wagons and hauled to Boonville and from there, after the skirmish of June 17, followed the fortunes of the retreating State forees from the first battle in the State at Boonville to the eneampinent down on the Cowskin, a stream in the southwestern part of the State, in MeDonald County. The seal, which is now one of Missouri's histor- ieal relies, remained in the enstody of the Secretary of State, who was with the Governor, and its impress appeared on the certified copy of the ordinance or aet of seeession passed by the Legislature convened at Neoslio. This seal remained, after the battle of Wilson Creek, in eustody of the subject of this biography at Springfield, Missouri, until the retreat of General Price in the spring of 1862. He had it in charge at the time of the battle of Pea Ridge in Mareli of that year, and took it on the mareh from Van Buren, Arkansas, after the battle of Pea Ridge, to Des Are on White River in Arkansas.
When General Priee's Army and Governor Jackson's eivil staff, ineluding the Seeretary of State, Lieutenant Governor and others, reaelied this little town of Des Arc they there 111et the Committee or Commission which had been appointed by the Legislature at Neosho to superintend the engraving or lithographing of $10,000,000 in State bonds, by whieli tlie seeeding State expected to obtain the sinews of war. These bonds were there signed by the Governor and sealed with the said seal and attested by the Seeretary. As the Secretary of State was absent it became the duty of liis son as his representative to affix liis father's name and the seal of the State to many of these bonds. The bonds of smaller denomina- tion were then used for paying the State troops whose time liad about expired. Shortly thereafter Priee's Army disbanded as a State organization, and the larger part of the troops
Banj. u makey
Lrgal Publ hig do. St. Louis
269
THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
enlisted in the Confederate service. Governor Jackson died shortly afterward at the home of his son-in-law, at Des Arc, and Lieutenant Governor Reynolds, who was then with Governor Jackson, assumed the reins of State government, guided the ship of State as well as might be under existing circumstances. It is Mr. Massey's impression that he (Gov- ernor Reynolds) then took charge of the State seal, as that was the last he saw of it until after the war, when this seal was presented by Governor Reynolds in person to Governor McClurg, at Jefferson City, and where it now remains as a relic and souvenir of the part taken by Missouri in the conflict of States.
Before the State government evacuated Jefferson City, Mr. Massey had settled on the law as a profession, but the breaking out of the war deprived him of the opportunity to attend a law school, and it was in the closing days of the war that he began reading in the office of Judge E. L. Edwards at the State Capital. Shortly after the close of the conflict lie entered the office of McAfee & Phelps, one of the strongest law firms in the State, being composed of Hon. Charles B. McAfee, now Judge of the Criminal Court of Greene County, and Hon. John S. Phelps, who in .1876 was elected Governor of Missouri. Under such tutelage the young inan prosecuted his studies to a conclusion, and was admitted to the bar by the Circuit Court at Springfield, July 18, 1866. In 1869 lie was admitted to the firm of McAfee & Phelps as a partner, and in appreciation of the fact that he had inarried about that time, the two seasoned veterans of the law, McAfee and Phelps, decided that the young man should be made the senior member of the partnership, and thus the style of the firm became Massey, McAfee & Phelps. He has practiced in Springfield continuously ever since, and has largely kept free from formning any relationship with organizations or affairs outside of his profession. His practice is very largely of a corporation character, which is in itself evidence of his standing as a lawyer, as the great aggregations of capital employ none but the best talent in that line. The following are some of the corporations for which he is the regular attorney: Springfield Traction Co., Springfield Lighting Co., Bank of Springfield, Central National Bank, Springfield Wagon Co., Holland Banking Co., and Springfield Waterworks Co.
Mr. Massey was first married April 20, 1869, to Miss Sidney Smith, a step-daughter of the late Gen. James L. Minor. The marriage was consummated at Jefferson City, the home of the bride. Mrs. Massey died in February, 1875. In November, 1879, Mr. Massey was married the second time to Miss Crissie Boone, who died in July, 1891. In 1893 Mr. Massey was married to his present wife, who was Miss Ella Jones. To the first marriage was born one child, a son, named Benjamin Minor Massey; to the second marriage were born two children, named respectively Robert and Alice, and to the third a daughter, Mildred.
CHARLES BINGLEY MCAFEE, SPRINGFIELD.
A MAN of many lovable traits, of strongly pronounced individuality, and redolent of the
originality, virility and naturalness of the great West, is the Hon. Charles Bingley McAfee, of Springfield, now Judge of the Criminal Court of Greene County. Judge Mc- Afee may be considered as a better type of the strong, reliant, independent, creative char- acters produced by that developing section, the great West, where "every tub stands on
270
THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
its own bottom." He is in all respects a self-made man, and wrought out his aspirations toward the law by reading Blackstone in spare inoments wliile slioving the jack-plane as a carpenter. Frequently he brushed aside the shavings on his bench that he might find a resting place for his law books.
Judge McAfee comes of Kentucky-Virginia stock, and was born at Lexington, Kell- tucky, March 28, 1832, and is therefore now in his sixty-sixth year. He is the son of Robert McAfee, born in Kentucky, and his wife, Martha Cavanaugh, a native of Virginia. His ancestors were of that bold, fearless pioneer stock that reclaimed this continent fromn savagery, and he, their descendant, is a genuine type of the pure American. They loved freedom and the frontier more than money, and hence none of them amassed great wealth. Some of them were the companions and friends of Boone and they were mostly Indian haters and fighters.
At a very early day Judge McAfee's parents moved to Missouri, settling in Marion County, later moving to Shelby County. In these counties the former received his educa- tion, attending the school kept in the log school houses of that pioneer day. Later he learned tlie carpenter's trade, and it was while working at the bench for from five to twelve dollars per month, "and board," that he fitted himself for the bar. He was admitted in Harrison County in 1854 by Judge Dunn.
Notwithstanding his Southern birth and breeding, when the war came on he entered the Federal army. He enlisted as a private, served three years and rose successively to tlie rank of Lieutenant, Captain and Major. He was also for a time Judge Advocate of the District of Southwest Missouri.
Few inen are more widely known in Missouri than Judge McAfee, as he has lived at different times in Marion, Shelby, Cooper, Callaway, Platte, Nodaway, Macon, Grundy, Mercer, Henry, Randolph, Buchanan and Harrison Counties. After the war lie settled in Greene County, and there his practice has augmented and his reputation increased. For many years he was a member of the firm of McAfee & Phelps, the junior member, John S. Phelps, afterward being Governor of Missouri. Afterward the firm admitted B. U. Massey.
Judge McAfee is a man whom his fellow-citizens have delighted to honor. He was a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1875. In1 1868 and again in 1872 he was his district nominee for Congress, or, as the Judge puts it in that whimsical vein of humor which is one of his marked characteristics-" There were two occasions when I did not go to Congress. There were several thousands more Republicans in the district than Democrats, and some of the former neglected to vote for me." He is patriotically devoted to the interests of Southwest Missouri, and with others organized and assisted in building the street railway of Springfield. In 1896 he was elected to the position he now occupies as Judge of the Criminal Court of Greene County.
Judge McAfee is a thoroughibred Democrat, is a Master Mason, Royal Arch and Knight Templar, and lias trod the burning sands as a Shriner. In the period succeeding the war, lie labored tirelessly to have the olive branch extended, and some account of those times will be found in his inimitable sketch in this volume. Like all inen of kindly nature and great soul, the Judge is a lover of nature. He knows all the hills of the Ozarks for miles around Springfield, and all his spare time is spent with gun and rod afield.
С.В. М. Ара
271
THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
Judge McAfee was married in February, 1864, in Newton County, to Martha Elizabeth Ritchey. They have five boys-all Democrats-as the Judge puts it, "a straight flush of Democrats."
FRANK WINTON McALLISTER, PARIS.
LDER members of the bar in Monroe County regard Frank Winton McAllister as a young man with a future full of rich development. Like many others who have risen to legal positions in Missouri, he was born and raised on a farin, his birthplace being near Paris, in Monroe County, Missouri, on January 26, 1873. His father was William Horace McAllister, a native of Spencer County, Kentucky, of which place he was one of the fore- most citizens. The paternal grandfather of Frank W. McAllister was Gabriel McAllister, who, born and reared in Maryland, emigrated to Kentucky, and brought with him into Spencer County the culture and intelligence of the East combined with the industry and honesty inherited from his Scotch-Irish ancestors. Mr. McAllister's maternal grandfather was Robert Caldwell, who was of Scotch descent. He was a native of the rare old State of Virginia, which has been the mother of so many of the forefathers of eminent lawyers practicing to-day in Missouri. His daughter, Sallie P. Caldwell, who married William Horace McAllister in Monroe County, Missouri, in 1868, is the inother of Frank W. McAllister. The parents are both alive, and their present home is in Saline County, Mis- souri, where they are in comfortable circumstances, and will probably spend the rest of their days. Frank is their only child, and their pride and solace.
After several years in the public schools of Nelson, Saline County, Mr. McAllister decided that the legal profession was best fitted for his talents, and he entered the law office of R. M. Reynolds, at Marshall, in Saline County. After a course of diligent study, he was admitted to the bar on October 22, 1894, at Marshall, by Judge Richard Fields. He chose his own town and county as the most promising field for his future labors, and began practicing law at Paris, in April, 1895, being still there.
Although receiving a practical education in the public schools, Mr. McAllister is to some extent self-taught, being to this day as earnest a student at home of the higher branches of learning as many younger men are in their colleges. He has made himself proficient in Greek and Latin in an unusually brief time by the closest application, going through a two years' course in a private Latin class. The remarkable feature in Mr. McAllister's career as a lawyer is the rapidity of the advancement he has made, and the firin footing of every step taken, based upon the thoroughness of hard study. Although he has inherited much of his capacity for perseverance, lie can say the foundation of his success lies principally in his own individual efforts to rise in the world.
Mr. McAllister is City Attorney of Paris, and as such has managed the municipality's affairs with an insight and discrimination that make all obstacles easily overcome. Perhaps his best work as City Attorney has been the revision of the city laws, which he recently made. This compendium is much admired by veteran lawyers, and is said by them to be a masterpiece of collation and arrangement. Considering the difficulties of the task and the ease with which it was performed, the result is superb.
In the courts of Monroe County, Mr. McAllister is always eloquent in pleading; still he lays no great stress on being an orator. It has been proven, however, by aural demon-
272
THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
stration, that, as President of the Bryan Free Silver Club of Paris, he is developing orator- ical talents of a high degree. It is safe to say that before he is many years older his voice will be lieard throughout the State discussing all leading issues from the Democratic stand- point. He has been connected in his time with cases, not only of importance as to the matter in dispute, but full of legal entanglements that would puzzle many older and more experienced heads in the profession. It is in the study and management of such cases as these that his capacity for hard work exhibits itself to the highest advantage. The more complicated and confusing the question to be solved, the more pleasure it affords him; and when success finally comes, which it generally does, he is on the lookout for a problem harder still to solve. Mr. McAllister is not married.
THEODORIC FACKLER McDEARMON,
SAINT CHARLES.
A FTER the French settlement in and around St. Louis, came the influx of those hardy, strong and fearless pioneers from east of the Mississippi, the immigrants coming almost exclusively from the States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, which States in that day, although sparsely settled and decidedly primitive, were still too old and crowded to please the pioneer instincts and love of freedom, the "desire for the unpeopled woods and boundless prairies," of these brave people, who would have felt confined and hampered in the civilization of this day, for which they laid the foundation. The number who came from those States was insignificant before the admission of Missouri in 1820, and even after that they did not come in bands as did the Germans in 1833, but their settlement on the eastern border of the State progressed through twenty years, or up to 1840. They were not city dwellers, were not used to acting in concert, and each head of a family feeling cer- tain of his complete ability to protect and care for that family, desired to be free from the restraint even of acting in concert with any one. Thus they came in families, by ones and twos, and settled all that stretch of rich country bordering the west bank of the Mississippi and which now constitutes the counties of St. Louis, St. Charles, Lincoln, Pike and Marion. They were a dominant people, and were the highest type of the Anglo-Saxon, if such a bull may be permitted respecting a people whose origin was partially Celtic. Then and ever since, in contact with other races, and even the people from other States, their ideas, opinions, customs and habits have colored and shaped the general mass.
Among the Virginians who settled in that section of Missouri, not long after the admission of the State, was James R. McDearmon, whose ancestors originally came from the north of Ireland. About 1831, leaving his wife, he came on horseback from Virginia, and taught school near Bridgeton, in St. Louis County. The following year he returned to Virginia and moved his wife and two children, who were born in Virginia, to Bridgeton, where he continued teaching school. His wife was Martha A. Gannaway, daughter of a respected Virginia family of Scotch origin which settled in Virginia some time near the middle of the Seventeenth Century. The grandfather of Janics R. McDearmon's wife served under Braddock on the celebrated expedition when lic led his soldiers to such com- plete defeat. After a time James R. McDcarmon and wife bought a farm and moved to St. Charles County, and there on June 14, 1840, was born the subject of this biography. James R. McDearmon was a man of splendid character and noble attributes. He had a
273
THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
fine education, and soon impressed his fellow-citizens with a sense of his strength and worth. For many years he was Judge of the County Court of St. Charles County, and was appointed in 1846, by Governor Reynolds, State Auditor, and was still acting in that capacity when he died, in 1848. In the fall of 1847 a movement was inaugurated to nom- inate him for Governor, and St. Charles and Pike, then dominant counties in the politics of the State, instructed for him, but his death in March, 1848, ended all efforts in that direc- tion, and Austin A. King was nominated and elected.
Theodoric F. McDearmon received the principal part of his education at St. Charles College, which was the first college for males established west of the Mississippi, and is yet one of the flourishing educational institutions of St. Charles. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1862 at St. Charles, and has lived there ever since, with the excep- tion of two years when a boy, which he spent with his father at Jefferson City, while the latter was Auditor, and a term of three years spent in the West, this journey to the West being made in 1865, the next year after his adinission to practice. He located at Helena, Montana, but did not enter into practice. While there he was appointed by Governor Edgerton, Judge of the Probate Court, but did not qualify, as he returned to Missouri in 1866. Prior to going to Montana he was a inember of Missouri Enrolled Militia and was First Lieutenant of Company A, of this regiment, but was called into no active service, except in the county.
After his return to St. Charles in 1866 he took up the active practice of law and has been engaged therein ever since. In 1872 he was elected City Attorney of St. Charles and has with the exception of four years, served continuously in that position ever since. By the district composed of St. Louis, St. Charles, Lincoln and Warren Counties he was nom- inated for the St Louis Court of Appeals in 1884, but was defeated. He was also a Demo- cratic candidate for Congress in the Ninth District in 1888. Mr. McDearmon is a staunch friend of education and has labored assiduously to advance the educational interests of his town. He has been President of the School Board for many years and is yet serving in that capacity. In fraternal circles he is a member of the Ancient Order of United Workmen, the Knights of Honor and the Maccabees.
Mr. McDearmon was married October 16, 1876, to Miss Fannie Fielding, of St. Charles, her father being a civil engineer and interested in railroads. Her grandfather, John H. Fielding, was the first President of St. Charles College, and a pioneer Methodist preacher of that vineyard. It will thus be seen that the family is one of the oldest resident of that section. Mr. and Mrs. McDearmon have five interesting children, four girls and one boy, named respectively, Madge, Theo, Patty, Fielding and Frances.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.