During this period in the history of the county, Atchison had one of the strongest bars in the State of Kansas. Among the able lawyers then in the active practice were: P. T. Abell, about whom much has appeared in this history; Gen. Benjamin F. Stringfellow, Alfred G. Otis, John J. Ingalls, George W. Glick, Samuel C. Kingman, J. T. Hereford, Gen. W. W. Guthrie, Albert H. Horton, Cassius G. Foster, S. H. Glenn, F. D. Mills and David Martin, and one of that number, Mr. Waggener, is also authority for the statement that Benjamin F. Stringfellow was the most brilliant. General Stringfellow was a brother of Dr. John H. Stringfellow, one of the founders of Atchison, and, like his brother, was a strong pro-slavery leader. He was famous before he came to Atchison, because of his widely known views with regard to the opening of Kansas as a slave State, and for the depth and force of his arguments upon the points then at issue. General Stringfellow was born in Fredericksburg, Va., September 3, 1816, and before coming to Kansas he was a resident of Missouri. He first located in Louisville, Ky., and then went to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to Huntsville, Mo., finally locating at Keytesville, where he settled down in his profession, and was recognized as being a young lawyer of fine ability. He declined the position of circuit attorney, but upon the earnest solicitation of the governor, he finally yielded and entered upon the duties of that office, and subsequently was elected without opposition, and held that office for a term of four years at a salary of $250 a year. He subsequently was elected to the legislature, with the largest majority ever received in a county, and immediately became a very active, popular and influential member of that body. Shortly thereafter the position of attorney-general of the State of Missouri became vacant, and General Stringfellow was appointed to that place. He held the office of attorney-general for four years. It was then that he formed a partnership with Hon. P. T. Abell, which continued until the fall of 1851, and they removed to Weston, Platte county, Missouri, in the fall of 1853.
At the opening of Kansas to settlement in 1854, General Stringfellow found the abolitionists preparing to get control of the country, and, in opposition to the formation of the Massachusetts Immigrants’ Aid Society, he took part in the organization of a pro-slavery organization at Weston, Mo., known as the Platte County Self-Defensive Association, of which he was secretary, and one of its most active members. General Stringfellow, foreseeing the conflict, insisted that the only means of preventing or deferring it, was to make Kansas a slave State, and thus retain sufficient power in the United States Senate to defeat aggression by the abolitionists on the rights of the South. General Stringfellow, with all the power and enthusiasm of his southern temperament, labored ceaselessly for the success of his cause. He was the active man of what was generally called “Atchison, Stringfellow & Company.”
When the pro-slavery forces finally succeeded, and the destiny of Kansas was fixed, General Stringfellow went to Memphis, Tenn., in 1858, but not liking the climate, and compelled by his financial interests to look after property in Atchison, he brought his family here and became a resident of Atchison county in the fall of 1859, and remained here during all the bitter conflict that followed, beloved and respected by friends and opponents alike. He submitted gracefully to the final decision, and, while never seeking office, and influenced in his political action by what he deemed the best interests of the people of the State, he cordially coöperated with the Republican party in Kansas, but he was preëminently a lawyer, although he had a large outside business interests during his residence here. He was active in the organization and construction of the Atchison & St. Joseph railroad, which was the first railroad connecting Kansas with the East, and was its first attorney. Shortly before his death he made a trip around the world. He died in Chicago in the early nineties.
GEN. B. F. STRINGFELLOW
COL. J. A. MARTIN
A few years after General Stringfellow immigrated from Missouri into Kansas, there came another famous lawyer, who was also formerly an attorney-general of Missouri, Gen. Bela M. Hughes. General Hughes was also one of the brilliant lawyers of an early day, who remained in Atchison but a few years as general counsel for the Overland Stage Line. Before coming to Atchison, General Hughes was a resident of St. Joseph, where he was the president and general counsel for the Central Overland California & Pike’s Peak Express Company. When this line was sold, under a mortgage foreclosure, to Ben Holladay, in 1862, General Hughes came to Atchison. He served as general counsel for Mr. Holladay until the line was purchased by Wells, Fargo & Company. He was retained by this company as its general counsel, which continued to operate the overland stage line, until a railroad was built across the plains, meanwhile moving to Denver, where he was elected the first president and general counsel of the Denver & Pacific railway, the first railroad to enter Denver, in July, 1870, and he later became general counsel for the Denver & South Park railroad, and a member of the last territorial legislature of Colorado. General Hughes was born in Kentucky, educated at Augusta College, and removed with his parents at an early date to Liberty, Mo. He was a member of the Missouri legislature, prosecuting attorney, and receiver of the United States land office at Plattsburg, from which place he went to St. Joseph. In his early youth he was a soldier in the Black Hawk war, serving with the Missouri volunteers. He took up his residence in Denver in the late sixties, when the city had less than 5,000 inhabitants. He died in Denver in 1904, at the age of eighty-six years.
Judge Samuel C. Kingman was born in Worthington, Mass., June 6, 1818. He attended a common school and academies of his home town, and became proficient in higher mathematics and Latin, but his regular attendance at school ended when he was seventeen years old. He was always a sickly man, and at times during his life was compelled to lay aside all study and attention to active affairs. At the age of twenty he drifted to Kentucky, where he remained eighteen years, teaching school, reading law and practicing as an attorney. He held offices as county clerk and county attorney in Kentucky, and was a member of the legislature of that State in 1850. In 1856 he came to Iowa, and in the following year moved to Brown county, Kansas, where he lived on a farm for a year, and then opened a law office in Hiawatha. Judge Kingman was a member of the Wyandotte Constitutional convention, which framed the constitution of the State, and the same year was elected a judge of the supreme court, taking his seat upon the admission of the State into the Union in 1861, holding his office for four years. In 1866 he was elected chief justice, and reëlected in 1872, but because of ill health he resigned in 1877, and retired from active professional life. Judge Kingman was for a time a resident of Atchison and a law partner of John J. Ingalls. He died in Topeka September 9, 1904.
Cassius G. Foster, another one of the brilliant galaxy of lawyers, who practiced in Atchison during the term of Judge Price on the bench, was born at Webster, Monroe county, New York, June 22, 1837. He was brought up on a farm until he was fourteen years of age, and having only the advantages of a common district school, he attended high school at Palmyra, N. Y., after which he went to Michigan, where he lived on a farm near Adrian, where he worked for his uncle. Meanwhile, he attended school at the academy in Adrian. He studied law with Fernando C. Beaman, of Adrian, and afterwards removed to Rochester, N. Y. In June, 1859, he came to Kansas, having previously been greatly interested in the Free State struggle, and upon arriving in Atchison, he formed a partnership with Judge S. H. Glenn, and immediately won for himself a high position at the bar of the State and Federal courts. He was elected State senator from Atchison county in 1862, and was mayor of Atchison in 1867. He practiced law here until 1874, when he was appointed United States district judge of Kansas.