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Biddle, Francis Beverley (09 May 1886–04 October 1968), lawyer, judge, and U.S. attorney general, was born in Paris, France, the son of Algernon Sydney Biddle, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and Frances Robinson. Biddle attended Haverford Academy (1895–1899); Groton Academy (1899–1905), where he excelled at boxing and gymnastics; and Harvard University, from which he graduated with a B.A. cum laude in 1909 and an LL.B. in 1911. His first job upon graduating was as personal secretary to Associate Justice ...

Black, Jeremiah Sullivan (10 January 1810–19 August 1883), U.S. attorney general, U.S. secretary of state, and attorney, was born near Stony Creek, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Black, a judge and legislator, and Mary Sullivan. Black read law under Chauncey Forward in Somerset, Pennsylvania, passing his bar examination at age twenty. When Forward was elected to Congress in 1830, he left Black in charge of his office, and the young attorney assumed responsibilities far beyond his experience. Black’s practice in Forward’s office became more secure when in 1836 he married Forward’s daughter Mary Forward. They had five children. In 1843 Black was baptized into his father-in-law’s faith, the Disciples of Christ church, and developed a close personal friendship with its founder ...

Cummings, Homer Stillé (30 April 1870–10 September 1956), attorney, Democratic party leader, and attorney general of the United States, was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Uriah C. Cummings, a businessman, and Audie Schuyler Stillé. Educated at the Heathcote School in upstate New York, the Sheffield School of Engineering of Yale University, and the Yale Law School, from which he graduated in 1893, Cummings opened a legal practice in Stamford, Connecticut, soon thereafter and formed a partnership with Charles D. Lockwood that lasted until he joined the ...

Johnson, Reverdy (21 May 1796–10 February 1876), lawyer, U.S. attorney general, and U.S. senator, was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of John Johnson, a lawyer and Maryland legislator, and Deborah Ghieselen. A member of a distinguished Maryland legal family (John Johnson served as a judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals, chancellor, and attorney general), Johnson was educated at St. John’s College in Annapolis. After graduating in 1811 and serving briefly as a private in the War of 1812, he began his legal training under his father and entered the bar in 1816. He established his law practice in Baltimore in 1817 and remained active in the Baltimore bar for the next sixty years. He married Mary Mackall Bowie in 1819, with whom he had fifteen children....

Lee, Charles ( July 1758–24 June 1815), lawyer and U.S. attorney general, was born at “Leesylvania,” in Prince William County, Virginia, the son of planter, burgess, and revolutionary politician Henry Lee (1727–1787) and Lucy Grymes. A younger brother of Henry (“Light-Horse Harry”) Lee (1756–1818), Charles Lee followed in his sibling’s footsteps and attended Princeton College (then called the College of New Jersey), where he graduated with honors in 1775. Somewhat aimless after graduation, he read law in Philadelphia in 1779; the next year he briefly held the post of secretary to the Board of Treasury. Lee was licensed to practice law at the Virginia bar in 1781 and commenced his profession in the local county courts of northern Virginia. Following the Revolution he expanded his practice into the General Court of Virginia and qualified before the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in 1785. During this period Lee gathered brief reports of cases decided by the judges of the superior courts, though his reports were not published until the twentieth century....

Mitchell, John Newton (15 September 1913–09 November 1988), lawyer and U.S. attorney general, was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Joseph C. Mitchell and Margaret McMahon. He was raised in Blue Point and Patchogue, Long Island, and Queens, New York. An outstanding student and top athlete, Mitchell attended Jamaica High School and graduated from Fordham Law School in 1938. In the same year he joined the New York City law firm of Caldwell & Raymond, where he specialized in municipal and state bond financing. During World War II Mitchell served as a naval officer, winning a Silver Star. After returning from the war, he resumed his law practice. In 1957 he divorced his first wife and married the outspoken Martha Beall Jennings ( ...

Olney, Richard (15 September 1835–08 April 1917), lawyer, U.S. attorney general, and secretary of state, was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, the son of Wilson Olney and Eliza Butler. His paternal grandfather, also named Richard, was prominent in the small community, having founded the town’s first textile mill and bank. A dominating personality, Olney’s grandfather largely controlled the lives of his children even as adults, except for those who broke with him. Wilson Olney remained subservient, working in his father’s counting house and later clerking in the Oxford Bank. Young Richard’s personality more closely resembled his grandfather’s and that of his ambitious and driving mother rather than his father’s....

Stanbery, Henry (20 February 1803–26 June 1881), lawyer and politician, was born in New York City, the son of Jonas Stanbery, a physician, and Ann Lucy Seaman. When Stanbery was eleven, he and his family moved to Zanesville, Ohio. In 1815 he matriculated at Washington College in Pennsylvania. Graduating in 1819, he decided to pursue a career in law and began studying under Ebenezer Granger of Zanesville. When Granger died, Stanbery continued his studies under the direction of attorney Charles B. Goddard. When he reached the age of majority in 1824, Stanbery was admitted to the Ohio bar and began a distinguished legal career that commenced in a partnership with the illustrious ...

Taney, Roger Brooke (17 March 1777–12 October 1864), lawyer, politician, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, was born in Calvert County, Maryland, the son of Michael Taney, a planter and politician, and Monica Brooke. The Taneys had been slaveholding planters since the first Taney arrived in Maryland in the 1660s, and at the time of Roger’s birth the family ranked among the most prestigious in the county. Originally Anglican, the Taneys had abandoned the English church for Catholicism well before the birth of Michael Taney, possibly in imitation of leading Maryland families....

Wickersham, George Woodward (19 September 1858–25 January 1936), attorney, Republican party leader, and attorney general of the United States, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Samuel Morris Wickersham, an inventor and businessman, and Elizabeth Cox. Raised by his maternal grandparents in Philadelphia after his mother died in childbirth and his father became absorbed in the iron and steel business, Wickersham grew up in privileged circumstances on the fringes of the city’s social elite. His grandfather, for example, had helped found the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Wickersham studied civil engineering at Lehigh University in the mid-1870s and caught the eye of one of the city’s leading Republican politicians, ...

Willebrandt, Mabel Walker (23 May 1889–06 April 1963), lawyer and assistant attorney general of the United States, was born in Woodsdale, Kansas, the only child of Myrtle Eaton and David William Walker, homesteaders and teachers. She spent her early years in prairie towns in Oklahoma and Missouri. In 1902 the family settled in Kansas City, Missouri, so that Mabel, who had been educated at home, could receive formal schooling. She entered Park College and Academy in 1906. Expelled the next spring for arguing with the president over the doctrine of the virgin birth, she joined her parents in Buckley, Michigan, where her father had opened a bank. She taught for two and a half years, then married Arthur Willebrandt, the high school principal, in 1910. In 1911, after moving to Tempe, Arizona, for Arthur’s health, Willebrandt earned a diploma from the State Normal School....