Arvey, Jacob Meyer (03 November 1895–25 August 1977), lawyer and Democratic leader, was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Israel Arvey, a businessman, and Bertha Eisenberg. His parents were Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. Arvey, known as “Jack,” married Edith Freeman in 1915; they had three children. After earning a degree at the John Marshall School of Law, he opened a law practice in Chicago in 1916....
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Arvey, Jacob Meyer (1895-1977), lawyer and Democratic leader
Howard W. Allen
Article
Bolin, Jane Matilda (11 April 1908–8 January 2007), attorney, judge, and civil rights activist
Jacqueline McLeod
Bolin, Jane Matilda (11 April 1908–8 January 2007), attorney, judge, and civil rights activist, was born in Poughkeepsie, New York to Matilda Emery Bolin and Gaius Charles Bolin. Matilda Emery immigrated with her parents to the United States from Northern Ireland and settled in Poughkeepsie, where she later met and married Gaius Charles Bolin, who had deeper roots in New York as a descendant of a long line of free Duchess County Black residents. The Bolins had lived in and around Poughkeepsie for nearly two hundred years and left an impressive legacy of civil rights protest upon which Jane Bolin built. Her grandfather, Abram Bolin, was an activist and reformer, who in ...
Article
Burke, Thomas (1849-1925), lawyer
Charles H. Sheldon
Burke, Thomas (22 December 1849–04 December 1925), lawyer, was born in Clinton County, New York, the son of James Burke and Delia Bridget Ryan, farmers. After his mother’s death in 1861, eleven-year-old Thomas left the farm and struck out on his own. He secured a position in a grocery store and then as a water carrier for railroad crews while boarding in Marion, Iowa. Later, while working part-time, he attended Ypsilanti Seminary in Michigan. Although slight of build and with a partially crippled arm, Thomas soon gained the respect of his classmates with his quick wit, unbounded energy, deep resonant voice, and eloquent speech—talents he would later use to great advantage in court and at public forums....
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Burke, Thomas (1849-1925)
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Thomas Burke. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-96663).
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Burlingham, Charles Culp (1858-1959), attorney, civic leader, and social and political reformer
Paul Brickner
Burlingham, Charles Culp (31 August 1858–06 June 1959), attorney, civic leader, and social and political reformer, was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, the son of the Reverend Aaron Hale Burlingham, a Baptist minister, and Emma Starr. Reverend Burlingham was a minister in New York City. C. C. B., as he was known by friends, lived in France for a time, after his father became minister of the American Chapel in Paris in 1863. In 1866 the family returned to the United States, and Charles’s father accepted a position as a pastor in St. Louis, Missouri, where Charles lived until he enrolled in Harvard University in 1875. He graduated in 1879 with an A.B. He then entered Columbia Law School, from which he received an LL.B. in 1881, the same year he was admitted to the New York bar. Two years later he married Louisa W. Lawrence; they had two sons and a daughter....
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Cummings, Homer Stillé (1870-1956), attorney, Democratic party leader, and attorney general of the United States
Michael E. Parrish
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 ...
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Cummings, Homer Stillé (1870-1956)
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Homer Cummings. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-90035).
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Dargan, Edmund S. (1805-1879), legislator and judge
Thomas D. Morris
Dargan, Edmund S. (15 April 1805–24 November 1879), legislator and judge, was born near Wadesboro, in Montgomery County, North Carolina, the son of a Baptist minister, whose given name is unknown, and a woman whose maiden name was Lilly. Dargan’s full middle name is listed in a number of sources as either Strother or Spawn. His father died when Dargan was very young. There was no adequate estate, and to earn a livelihood he became an agricultural laborer. Dargan was a self-educated young man who studied the law in typical nineteenth-century fashion, in the law office of a local practitioner in Wadesboro. After a year of study he was admitted in 1829 to the North Carolina bar. The following year he walked to Alabama, where he settled in Washington in Autauga County. He was admitted to the Alabama bar and served as a justice of the peace in Autauga County for a number of years....
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Darrow, Clarence (18 April 1857–13 March 1938), lawyer, orator, and author
Kevin Tierney
Darrow, Clarence (18 April 1857–13 March 1938), lawyer, orator, and author, was born Clarence Seward Darrow at Kinsman, in rural Ohio, the son of Amirus Darrow, a furniture maker and undertaker, and Emily Eddy. He initially attended local public schools and then, in 1873–1874, the preparatory department of Allegheny College; thereafter he taught school in Vernon, Ohio, for three years while concurrently studying law books. In 1877 he enrolled in the law department of the University of Michigan, at which he remained only one year. He then apprenticed at a law office in Youngstown and was admitted to the Ohio bar on oral examination at the age of twenty-one....
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Darrow, Clarence (18 April 1857–13 March 1938)
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Clarence Darrow Left, with John F. Raulston, the judge in the Scopes trial, 1925. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-95411).
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Dembitz, Lewis Naphtali (1833-1907), attorney and activist in public affairs
Philippa Strum
Dembitz, Lewis Naphtali (03 February 1833–11 March 1907), attorney and activist in public affairs, was born in Zirke, Prussia. His father, Sigmund Dembitz, was a surgeon whose degree from a Prussian university precluded his practicing in Austria, which required an Austrian degree. He, his wife Fanny Wehle, and their three children therefore led a wandering existence throughout other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, particularly Poland, while Sigmund unsuccessfully sought a profitable practice in various small towns. The young Dembitz attended schools in Munchenberg, Brandenburg, Frangbord, and Sagan and graduated at age fifteen from the Gymnasium of Glogau University in Frankfort-on-the-Oder. Dembitz’s family did not observe religious rituals. A schoolmate at Glogau introduced him to Orthodox Judaism when Dembitz was thirteen, however, and as an adult he adhered strictly to its tenets and rituals. His one semester of legal studies in Prague was interrupted by the unsuccessful political uprising of 1848. Although neither he nor his family were active participants, they found that the combination of their sympathy for the uprising’s libertarian goals and their Jewishness, assimilated though it was, made life in the Empire uncomfortable. Thirty-five members of the interrelated Wehle, Dembitz, and Brandeis families therefore immigrated to the United States in 1849....
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Foster, Judith Ellen Horton Avery (1840-1910), lawyer, temperance activist, and Republican party leader
Melanie Gustafson
Foster, Judith Ellen Horton Avery (03 November 1840–11 August 1910), lawyer, temperance activist, and Republican party leader, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Jotham Horton, a blacksmith and a Methodist minister, and Judith Delano. Both parents died when she was young, and Judith moved to Boston to live with her older married sister. She then lived with a relative in Lima, New York, where she attended the Genessee Wesleyan Seminary. After graduation she taught school until her first marriage to Addison Avery in 1860. They had two children, one of whom died in childhood. The marriage ended about 1866, and she moved to Chicago, supporting herself and her child by teaching music in a mission school. In Chicago she met Elijah Caleb Foster, a native of Canada and a recent graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. After their marriage in 1869, they moved to Clinton, Iowa. They had two children; one died at the age of five....
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Foster, Judith Ellen Horton Avery (1840-1910)
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Judith Ellen Foster. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-102556).
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Gardiner, John (December 1733?–08 August 1793), attorney, political radical, and legal reformer
Peter R. Virgadamo
Gardiner, John ( December 1733?–08 August 1793), attorney, political radical, and legal reformer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Silvester Gardiner, a physician, and Anne Gibbins. He attended local schools and in 1745 was sent to the office of attorney Benjamin Prat...
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Garfield, Harry Augustus (1863-1942), lawyer, educator, and public official
Robert D. Cuff
Garfield, Harry Augustus (11 October 1863–12 December 1942), lawyer, educator, and public official, was born in Hiram, Ohio, the son of James A. Garfield, the twentieth president of the United States, and Lucretia Rudolph (Lucretia Rudolph Garfield). A witness to the fatal shooting of his father in 1881, Garfield grappled with the implications of that tragedy for the rest of his life. He earned a B.A. at Williams College, 1881–1885, and after teaching briefly at St. Paul’s, a private school for boys, he studied law at Columbia University, 1886–1887, and in England at Oxford University and the Inns of Court, 1887–1888. In the latter year he married Belle H. Mason; they had four children....
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Henry, Patrick (1736-1799), revolutionary statesman, orator, and lawyer
Thad Tate
Henry, Patrick (29 May 1736–06 June 1799), revolutionary statesman, orator, and lawyer, was born at Studley, Hanover County, Virginia, the son of John Henry, a Scottish-born and prosperous planter, and Sarah Winston Syme, a young widow, also from a family of substantial means. Often mistakenly thought to have been of more humble origins, Patrick Henry was, by birth and estate, a member of the gentry of the colony, if not of the highest rank. After attending a local school for a few years, he received the remainder of his formal education from his father, who had attended King’s College, University of Aberdeen....
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Henry, Patrick (1736-1799)
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Patrick Henry. Etching by Albert Rosenthal, 1888. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-102566).
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Ingersoll, Robert Green (1833-1899), orator and lawyer
Mark A. Plummer
Ingersoll, Robert Green (11 August 1833–21 July 1899), orator and lawyer, was born in Dresden, New York, the son of the Reverend John Ingersoll, a fiery Congregational orator and abolitionist, and Mary Livingston. When Robert was two years old his mother died. His father then moved the family through a dozen or more pastorates in New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. Robert came to reject his father’s gloomy Calvinism but embraced his oratorical style, abolitionism, and his assiduous reading habits. Although the itinerant status of the family limited his formal schooling, Ingersoll was well versed in the classics. He taught for two years at subscription schools in Mount Vernon and Metropolis, Illinois, and in Waverly, Tennessee. Both Robert and his brother Ebon Clark Ingersoll, a future congressman, were introduced to the law and politics when they read law for a few months in the office of Democratic congressman Willis Allen, in Marion, Illinois, where they were admitted to the bar in 1854. Robert served as a legal clerk in various federal, county, and circuit courts in southern Illinois. In late 1857 or early 1858 the brothers moved to Peoria, where they developed a thriving legal practice....
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Ivins, William Mills (1851-1915), lawyer and municipal reformer
Donald W. Rogers
Ivins, William Mills (22 April 1851–23 July 1915), lawyer and municipal reformer, was born in Freehold, New Jersey, the son of Augustus Ivins, a prominent street railway builder, and Sarah Mills, a noted charity worker. Ivins attended Adelphi Academy and then secured employment with local publisher D. Appleton & Company. He soon entered Columbia Law School, graduating and gaining admission to the bar in 1873. In 1879 he married Emma Laura Yard of Freehold, New Jersey....
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Keith, Mary McHenry (20 Nov. 1855–13 Oct. 1947), lawyer, suffragist, and civic activist
Alexandra M. Nickliss
Keith, Mary McHenry (20 Nov. 1855–13 Oct. 1947), lawyer, suffragist, and civic activist, was born Mary McHenry in the East Bay (East of San Francisco) on the Temescal Rancho, a place that came to be called Shellmound Park that stretched over the cities of Oakland and Berkeley and is now Emeryville, California. She was the daughter of Judge John McHenry, who sat on the First District Court and the Supreme Court in Louisiana in New Orleans before migrating west at the tail end of the gold rush, and Ellen Josephine Metcalf McHenry, a poet. Mary graduated from Notre Dame School for Girls in San Jose and the San Francisco Girls High School and Normal School. She then attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in ...
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