Alexander Wells (California)
Alexander Wells (c. 1821 – October 31, 1854) was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California.
Life
Wells was born about 1821 in New York City.[1] He was admitted to the bar about 1842, and practiced law in New York City. He also entered politics as a Democrat, and was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1846. On October 7, 1846, he married Annie Van Rensselaer Van Wyck.[2] About 1850, they moved to California.
Wells was appointed in April 1852 as a Temporary Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court, to serve during the absence of Justice Solomon Heydenfeldt, and remained on the bench until October.[3] He won the Democratic nomination for a seat as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California in 1852, defeating the incumbent Alexander O. Anderson who had been appointed to the vacancy caused by the resignation of H. A. Lyons. On November 2, 1852, Wells was elected for the remainder of the term, which expired at the end of 1854. He was to be re-elected in 1854 for a full term,[4] but died suddenly on October 31, 1854, at his home in San Jose, California.[5] One historian summed up his judicial career as follows: "The sixth associate justice, Alexander Wells, who came to the bench in 1853 at the age of 59,[sic] died a year later, leaving no published legal mark on the court".[6]
References
- ↑ Richard Roy Powell, Compromises of Conflicting Claims: A Century of California Law, 1760 to 1860 (1977), p. 227.
- ↑ The American Monthly Magazine (Vol. 3; 1893; pg. 686)
- ↑ Alexander Wells in Journal of the State Bar of California (1946; Vol. 21–22; pg. 225)
- ↑ The State Register and Year Book of Facts (1859; pg. 192)
- ↑ History of the Supreme Court justices of California by J. Edward Johnson (1963; pg. 1831)
- ↑ Servants of the Law by Donald R. Burrill (2011), p. 65. [Wells was about 31, not 59, when he took office]
External links
- Portrait of Alexander Wells at the California Supreme Court Historical Society