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 75
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Mr. Krauthoff is endowed with a splendid energy, and one of the elements of his suc- cess is a genuine love of his professional work. He is an eloquent speaker, is careful and industrious in his preparation of a case, and is a formidable cross-examiner. He is very positive in manner and strives always to be exact and truthful in everything. Although in years he is classed among the younger members of the Missouri bar, in knowledge of the law and ability he stands near the oldest and most experienced.
Since serving as the Representative of his county in the Legislature, Mr. Krauthoff has steadily refused to accept public office. However, he has accepted and served in such honorary positions as the Chairmanship of the Democratic Central Committee of Jackson County, and is now a member of the National Democratic Committee (Gold), a position to which he was elected at the Indianapolis Convention of 1896. His friends believe that should he conclude to enter public life he would make for himself a splendid name.
SANFORD BURRITT LADD,
KANSAS CITY.
CANFORD BURRITT LADD is a very modest inan and few facts concerning his life have ever been given the public by him, and therefore his written biography is on that account a brief one. He was born at Milford, Michigan, September 11, 1844, and is the son of David M. and Martha A. Ladd. His mother, whose maiden name was Martha A. Hartwell, is dead, but his father is yet living and is hale and vigorous.
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After the necessary preparation, he entered the famned University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and after graduation, in conformity with the conclusion reached in family council and his own inclination, began the study of law. He chose an excellent and distinguished preceptor in the Hon. G. V. N. Lothrop, of Detroit, afterward Minister to Russia.
In 1868 he was admitted to the bar in Michigan, and in the same year struck out for himself, selecting Kansas City as the scene of his labors and at once opening an office there for business. For one year he practiced alone, and then entered into a partnership with John C. Gage, an association that has proved inost compatible and inutually helpful, and which has existed to the present day, without any modification except the admission in 1882 of Charles E. Sinall to partnership, the style now being Gage, Ladd & Small.
After two years spent in establishing himself on first going to Kansas City, Mr. Ladd returned to Ann Arbor, and there in 1870, inarried Miss Clara L. Fuller, the sweetheart of his college days.
Since he went to Kansas City in 1868, Mr. Ladd has uninterruptedly there continued in practice. He has never sought any public office, but was President of the Kansas City Bar Association in 1892-93. He is a zealous worker and conscientiously enlists his whole effort and soul in every cause that he espouses. No case was ever lost by him by reason of lack of zeal or industry on his part. He is well read, well balanced in mind and char- acter, and as a pleader before a jury is practical and impressive. His arguments are clear and concise, demonstrating the possession of an analytical mind.
He possesses the rare faculty of presenting a mass of complicated and involved facts so that Judge and jury have no difficulty in carrying them in mind through all stages of the trial and so that opposing counsel have no just ground to complain that relevant facts have been omitted or made unduly prominent, at the same time always distinguishing between admitted facts and controverted matters. It is this capacity to make a full, fair, lucid and logical recital of the facts of a case, without repetition, that makes him a welcome advocate in courts of review. In these courts, his presentation of the facts of a case is often all the argument desired. His practice is general in its character .*
HENRY LAMM,
SEDALIA.
BOUT the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the ravages of war and the A sorrows of religious oppression along the Rhine, drove many Germans to America. They seem to have preferred the inild doctrines of the Quakers which, with the favorable grant Penn had obtained fromn Charles II., the desirable qualities of the soil and the pic- turesque features of the region, together with the "Charter of Liberties" granted by Penn himself to his colonists, attracted the attention of these Rhine emigrants and drew them to Pennsylvania. From 1690 onward they, with their compatriots who joined them, subdued the forests, made farins and built cities in the charming valleys of that great State, and
* Mr. Ladd possesses in a singular degree the power to state a case fairly and clearly, and it is reputed in Kansas City that he can present the facts of a case with such fine equity and effect that the opposing counsel can seldom find much to add thereto. Though, of course, stating the elements of a case so they will put his client's case in the best possible liglit, it is all done with such consummate tact and delicacy, with such apparent freedom from prejudice, that the justness and candor of the statement is likely to have a deeper influ- ence with the jury than the most vehement partisanship. Judge Black, who in his official capacity has had opportunity to know him well, pronounces Mr. Ladd's ability in this line as something unequalled.
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their handiwork is now seen and recognized as an enduring monument to correct morals, industry, frugality and thrift.
The Jamestown Cavalier and the Plymouth Rock Pilgrim have had their annalist and historian, but that 110 pious liand has ever gathered the traditions or written the annals of these simple, silent, patient, God-fearing and resolute German settlers, is not to be wondered at; for the Germans of that time had no national literature, no national life and no national voice, pride or hope. Germany was rent apart and parceled out among many feudal despots and foreign despoilers. It has been said there was not then a German sail on any sea, but it has also been said significantly of them to their credit that "slave," and no correspond- ing word, occurs in their language. Loving liberty with a rooted, if inarticulate and un obtrusive, affection, they followed "the star" westward and for many generations, so great was their conservatism, they and their descendants preserved with more or less fidelity their old customs, old notions and quaint ways. Even their language, finally corrupted by long and constant contact and friction with the all-surrounding, conquering English speech, into an unclassified and conglomerate dialect, or patois, known as Pennsylvania German, was preserved and handed down from father to son for nearly two centuries and yet may be heard at the fireside, though unknown to the printed page.
Henry Lamm was born on December 3, 1846, in Wayne County, Ohio, close to a small village then called Bridgeport, but now Burbank, shortly after his parents had moved from Pennsylvania with their older children and settled on a partly improved homestead. His father's name was William Lamm and his mother's maiden name was Catherine Zuver. They were of Pennsylvania German descent and it was probably due to the rugged insensi . bility to change so characteristic of this people, that the family name of Lamm was never anglicized, but was kept in the German form, though the Lainms settled east of the Alle- ghanies, in Berks County, 150 years ago. The paternal grandfather, Philip Lamm, with his family, crossed the Alleghanies, then a notable feat, with ox teams in 1806, when his son William was three years of age and, himself a farmer and belonging to a race of fariners, lie cleared and made himself a home in the Mahoning Valley close to New Castle in what is now Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. He served in the War of 1812 on and about Lake Erie and one of the family traditions is, his either seeing, or hearing from those who did actually see, Commodore Perry shift his colors in the heat of the battle in Put-in-Bay, from liis dismantled flag ship, the Lawrence, over to the Niagara in a small row boat within pistol shot of the liostile Britishi cannon-a feat of arms unexampled, except in one or two instances, in all history.
There was born to Catherine and William Lamm ten children- six daughters and four sons - and Henry Lamm was the eighth child. This large family was respectably raised on a seventy-acre farm of inedium land, a portion of which was in "Sugar Camp," in Northern Ohio. The mother was a gentle and deeply pious woman and the father a inan of iron will, stalwart frame, and of settled and severe religious and political convictions. 'The problem of raising well so large a family on so sinall a farm was always a serious and perplexing one, but in this case through all the vicissitudes of hard times, ill luck, poverty and sickness, it was modestly and fairly well solved. Henry attended the winter district school two miles away, learned the trade of a broom-maker from his father and eldest brother, John, helped on the farm, had the ordinary adventures in the ordinary life of the ordinary country boy in the 'fifties and grew up an awkward, taciturn lad, fond perhaps of an arg11- ment, prone to books and, it is to be feared, to 110 small degree self-willed and dissatisfied
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with farm life. When he grew to be thirteen years of age he was sent to an academy at Caanan Center, in Wayne County, and, after a year or so attendance there and being de- termined on getting the advantages of a collegiate education, which his father was finan- cially unable to give him, he set out alone into the world with the tacit consent of his father to earn money to pay for his schooling. At this time his brother John, to whom he owes many of the aspirations of his life, took charge of him and brought him to Iowa and sent him to Western College, at Western, in Lynn County, from which school, in 1865, still with the advice and assistance of his brother, he entered the freshman class of that year in Michigan University, and took his degree from that university in 1869 with credit. In those days this great university drew to itself thousands of courageous and ambitious young men, many of them, whatever may be the case there now, struggling with poverty and other untoward circumstances. It did not then require an heroic amount of pluck and grit to be poor there.
Many of the students boarded themselves, and Henry Lamm, with his room-inate and chum, James Du Shane, for a long time the head of the schools and now a successful law- yer of South Bend, Indiana, made a daring innovation on the traditional customs of that University by renting for a mere pittance a plot of ground north of the campus and build- ing a cheap, warm, boarded-up "shanty" of two small rooms, one story high and with sta- tionary bunks attached to the wall for beds. Here they cooked, ate, slept, studied, dreamed dreams and lived for three years, until their house burned, and were as well thought of as if they had spent a thousand dollars a year each instead of two or three hundred apiece as they did. In college he was liked, and from time to time complimented by his class-mates with college honors. On graduation he came directly to Sedalia to prepare himself for his long-before chosen profession-the law-and inake his home. Being entirely without means, he earned his own living while pursuing his legal studies, and this he did by teach- ing school and accepting a deputy clerkship in the office of the County Clerk of Pettis County. In 1872 he was admitted to the bar. In 1873 he was appointed Circuit Clerk by Governor Woodson, and, after the end of his term in that office, in April, 1875, he com- menced the active practice of the law with his present partner, P. H. Sangree, in Sedalia. The firm of Sangree & Lamm has been in continuous existence since its formation, and, not without material assistance from its junior member, has attained an unquestioned rank as a cautious, industrious, reliable, honorable, and hence successful firm of lawyers. They have, perhaps, the most expensive and best equipped library in Central Missouri, and it may be, the most extensive private law library in the State.
Mr. Lamm affects no specialty in his profession, but is a good, all-round lawyer, and whether presenting his case in his briefs, on his pleadings, to a jury, or to a Judge, he is not only interesting, but attractive and persuasive. He is excellent in preparing his case for trial, in sifting an antagonistic witness, in lucidity of statement, apposite illustration, in having a quick, resourceful, courageous mind, a close watch on and clear perception of the varying vicissitudes and incidents of a law suit, a glowing warmth of zeal for his client's cause, and finally, in presenting his case so as to get a verdict. In humor, in the use of the dangerous weapons of ridicule, sarcasm and invective, in the art of enriching his speech by an apt quotation, in the use of simple Anglo-Saxon words, and in decorating his argu- ments with the allowable adornments of literary finish, figures of speech, and dramatic inter- est, he shows the powers and excellences of an accomplished barrister.
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He was twice elected Prosecuting Attorney of his county when the party to which he belongs was greatly in the ininority, and left behind him a good record of industrious faith- fulness to duty, fearlessness and success. During the great Gould strike in 1886, Sedalia was its storm center, and he earned the gratitude of all law-abiding people by upholding the law during a season of chaos and terror.
In politics Mr. Lamm is a Republican, but devoid of bitterness, and is a inan of inde- pendence. He was largely instrumental in getting his party to pay the unusual compliment of endorsing at least one Democratic judicial nomination, and has openly maintained that view in regard to other judicial nominations. He has been a delegate to his party's National Nominating Conventions and has presided over its State Conventions, has declined to be nominated for Congress, and, while devoted to his profession, has taken a large and manly interest in public affairs, serving for years on the School Board of his city and as a director in and attorney for its banking and business institutions; is a member of the Con- gregational Church and a Mason, a reasonably successful business man, a sympathetic, earnest, genial and good friend to those who know him well.
In 1874 he married Miss Grace A. Rose, of Saginaw, Michigan, and blessed by her refined gentleness, he declares himself the happiest and most contented in his comfortable lioine, presided over by a loving, Christian mother, surrounded by his children, his pictures and his books.
HARRY LANDER,
BROOKFIELD.
H
ARRY LANDER, of Brookfield, is one of those genial, large-hearted, generous,
highly competent men of whom Kentucky has been so lavish in her gifts to Mis- souri. He was the friend and brother practitioner of Lincoln, was admitted to the bar by Stephen A. Douglas, and was no less intimate with that great statesman. He has practiced law in the court of Judge David Davis, and was the friend also of that distinguished Illi- noisan. For more than forty years he lias practiced law on the circuit which includes his homne.
Mr. Lander was born in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, August 15, 1826, and comes of Revolutionary forefathers. His father, Henry Lander, was born in Clarke County, Kentucky, in 1801. He married Lucy Cleveland, who came of an English family which settled in Virginia long prior to the Revolution and at a very early day spread into Ken- tucky. The Landers were of Englishi-Welsh derivation, came to America at a day so remote that the date cannot be at this time exactly fixed, and settled in Kentucky as early as the days of Daniel Boone. The great grandfathers of Mr. Lander in both houses were Revolutionary soldiers. All his ancestors were pioneers of Kentucky and Virginia, those two States whose people are so near of kin, and in his independence and strengthli of char- acter demonstrates that he lias inherited much of the sturdy nobility of his forefathers, who battled with the wilderness, the Indians and the English.
In 1838, when Harry was about twelve years old, the Landers left Kentucky to seck a honic in Illinois, doubtless feeling like Daniel Boone, that even at that early day Kentucky was becoming too cramped for their free and independent pioneer spirits. They settled in Knox County, Illinois, and there the son grew up and was educated. For that place and day he received an excellent education, the foundation of which was laid in the public schools and
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THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
completed at Knox College, in the county where he resided. At Knoxville he next entered the office of Julius Manning and prepared himself for the bar. He was admitted in 1846, being then twenty years of age, and had the honor of passing his examination before no less a person than Stephen A. Douglas, who was then Judge of that circuit, after which he entered into a partnership with Julius Manning. This partnership continued for some two or three years. Of the early struggles of a young lawyer of that period, of the people, time, cir- cumstances and conditions surrounding his beginning, one may obtain a fair idea from the biography of Abraham Lincoln, for this great man and honored statesman "rode circuit" in that part of Illinois at that time, and young Lander often practiced in the same court with him. Of those days, and of his intimacies with this great statesman at a time when the white light of a world-wide publicity compelled no reservation of his natural self, and cast no deceptive shadows about him, Mr. Lander's memory is vivid, and owing to such excep- tional advantages of observation he can talk most entertainingly and instructively about the most thoroughly American of all the Presidents.
After three or four years at Knoxville, young Lander changed the field of his labor to Peoria. During his residence at Peoria he officed next door to and was an intimate asso- ciate of Robert G. Ingersoll and his deceased brother, Clark, who were then partners in the practice of law. Many are the amusing stories he tells of the "times" he and "Bob" had while young men together. He practiced there until 1857, and then moved to Brunswick, Missouri, where he remained until 1860, in which year he removed to Linn County, where he has followed his profession to the present day, with the exception of a five years' res- idence in St. Louis. By a little calculation it will be discovered that Mr. Lander has been a licensed lawyer for fifty-two years, a career wliose length has few duplicates in the lives of Missouri lawyers.
A year after locating in Linn County (1861), Mr. Lander enlisted in the military service of the Union, becoming a private in the Eighteenth Missouri Infantry. He served two years and was promoted and served part of that time as Provost Marshal. In 1863 he was appointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Linn County by Governor Fletcher, in which position he served two years. After the end of this term he resumed private practice and did not again accept an office until 1881, when he was urged to run for the Legislature, was elected and took a leading part in the sessions of that body. In recognition of his legal attainments he was placed by his colleagues on the Judiciary Committee. At his home town he is considered a friend of the public schools and the cause of education, and has served a number of termis as a member of the Brookfield School Board. He is now at the head of the law firm of Lander, Jolinson & Lander, composed of our subject, J. M. Johnson and the former's son, Harry P. Lander. He is a Democrat in politics, and as "straight" as any man who ever cast a vote.
Mr. Lander was married the same year he came to Brookfield (1861), to one of the fairest daughters of Chariton County. Her name was Martha McCoy and she was the daughter of George McCoy. The family came from Virginia and is one of the oldest families of Chariton County. Mr. and Mrs. Lander have one child, a son named Harry P. He adopted his father's profession and is now his partner in the law practice. He is a young man with a very promising future before him.
Mr. Lander is probably one of the best-known lawyers of the State. To not know Harry Lander of Brookfield, is almost to argue oneself unknown. He knew all the great lawyers who made the early bar illustrious, and has in fact been personally acquainted with
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almost every public or professional inan who has shown more than ordinary ability in Mis- souri for fifty years. There is scarcely a lawyer, politician, publicist, or distinguished man in the State but can hail him by name, and the hearty handshake they always give testifies their gladness at the meeting. He has that homeogeneous quality which makes him agree- able and likable in the highest degree-those traits of social sympathy which naturally attract his kind and win their confidence, for he instinctively inspires the feeling that he is of kin to every man. He has always been in recent years the friend and helper of the younger members of the bar, and to all men he has always displayed that width of charity which includes all humanity in a common brotherhood. He resents being called "Henry Lander," preferring the name Harry, which he considers a type of his democracy and which conveys the assurance that he is yet "one of the boys." His temperament is hopeful and optimistic, and the sunshine of his daily life has done much to dispel the shadows that fall atlıwart every human pathway. He is in moments of relaxation a delightful companion. Being gifted as a story teller, he can draw on the great storehouse of his experience indefinitely for incident and anecdote to illustrate his tale or point its moral. There is scarcely a man who has conspicuously appeared upon the stage of the State's history of whom he can not relate apt and interesting incidents which throw light on the characters and conditions of men and of days that are past. He has never permitted his popularity or his wide reputa- tion to serve as a means to lead him away from the law, and is inclined to treat his term as a State Legislator as more or less of a jest. Undoubtedly, scores of times in his long career
lie could have had any honor a public or political career had to offer, but he has proved liis devotion to the law by putting all such temptations aside. He is a very modest and unas- suming man, so much so indeed that it is not by his willing consent, but solely through his friends and admirers that his sketch appears in this volume. He is thoroughly democratic in his way of life, is plain, simple and unaffected. He is a hater of sham, and all ostentatious show or make-believe excites his laughter. He is in a marked degree what he appears to be - a plain, unassuming, kindly, generous, sympathetic, sunshiny old gentle- man. As a professional man his devotion has achieved a merited reward, not only in the fame he enjoys as an able lawyer, but in the pecuniary emoluments that come from an extensive practice. Although his practice is general, he is a specialist in a way, being known for his wide and deep knowledge of the laws governing land. Beyond doubt his fund of knowledge respecting the involved and intricate history of land transfers during the Spanish and French possession and since, is exceeded by no inan in the State. He has treated of that subject in a special article in this volume, and that will serve to show his exhaustive knowledge in that field better than can be told by his biographer.
GARDINER LATHROP, KANSAS CITY.
G ARDINER LATHROP was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on February 16, 1850. He is the youngest child of Jolin H. and Frances E. Lathrop. His father was a native of the State of New York and was graduated from Yale College in 1819. A few years thereafter he went to Gardiner, Maine, and engaged in teaching. His pleasant recollections of his early work there induced him in after years to name his youngest born after that beautiful New England town. From there he was called to Hamilton College, New York, where lic
Gardinen Nathrop
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THE HISTORY OF THE BENCH AND BAR OF MISSOURI.
first filled the chair of mathematics, and afterwards that of constitutional and international law. In 1840 he was elected the first President of the University of Missouri, and entered upon his duties in 1841. This position he occupied with great distinction until 1849, when he was inade Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin. After distinguished service in that State, hie resigned in 1859, and was President for one year of the University of Indiana, from which he was recalled in 1860 to the University of Missouri, where he remained until his death, in 1866. The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by Hamilton, and he was recog- nized as one of the leading educators of the United States. The mother of Gardiner was fully the equal of his father. One of her uncles was President of Harvard College, and her family was one of the most distinguished of the State of New York. She shared all the honors and labors of her husband in his extended educational work, and was everywhere recognized and received as a woman of rare cultivation and refinement, of most charming personality, combined with the loftiest Christian heroism and fortitude.
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