The Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis recently published a 140-page compendium, Famous and Infamous Lawyers in St. Louis History. Penned by the St. Louis Bar Journal’s longtime history editor, Marshall Hier, and edited by John Rasp, it demonstrates lawyers’ crucial role in St. Louis’ 250-year history. Yet St. Louisans might not even recognize many of these attorneys’ names.
Can you match them?
1. John Darby
2. Albert Burgess
3. Luther Ely Smith
4. Malcolm Woods Martin
5. Edward Bates
6. Lemma Barkeloo
7. Alonzo Slayback
8. Phoebe Couzins
9. Joseph Labusciére
10. Rufus Easton
A. Before her untimely death, the state’s first woman lawyer was once described by a law professor as “superior to Joan d’Arc.”
B. President Abraham Lincoln’s one-time attorney general was honored with a statue in Forest Park when it officially opened in 1876.
C. St. Louis’ first African-American lawyer went on to become the assistant city attorney.
D. Though she was among the state’s first women attorneys, she only practiced law for two months before devoting her attention to lectures on women’s suffrage and temperance.
E. A mayor, congressman, and respected historian, this attorney went bankrupt after a stint in banking.
F. The city’s first postmaster, this land speculator helped lay out Alton, Illinois. His daughter co-founded the school that is now Lindenwood University.
G. The city’s first attorney at one time owned the area’s biggest house and served as the village archivist. His records are among the city’s earliest.
H. Much of his life was spent trying to fulfill architect Eero Saarinen’s vision of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial spanning the river. An East St. Louis, Illinois, park—named after him—would eventually open in 2009.
I. Details surrounding the death of this Confederate colonel and prominent attorney, whose daughter was the Veiled Prophet’s first Queen of Love and Beauty, are still up for debate. What’s clear is, he was shot by the managing editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the time, after angrily rushing into the newspaper’s offices.
J. For years, the president of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association fought to see a memorial constructed on the riverbank. When the St. Louis attorney died in 1951, the Post-Dispatch wrote that when the Gateway Arch was eventually realized, “the greatest debt” would be to this man.
ANSWER KEY
A. 6
B. 5
C. 2
D. 8
E. 1
F. 10
G. 9
H. 4
I. 7
J. 3
