Henry C. McDowell, Jr.

Henry McDowell, Jr.
Born	August 24, 1861 Louisville, Kentucky United States
Died	October 8, 1933 (aged 72) Lexington, Kentucky
Residence	Lynchburg, Virginia
Education	Yale University University of Virginia School of Law
Occupation	Lawyer, jurist
Parent(s)	Henry Clay McDowell (1832–1899) & Anne Clay (1837–1917)

Henry Clay McDowell, Jr., (August 24, 1861 – October 8, 1933) was a Virginia lawyer and federal judge. He was the son of Henry Clay McDowell, proprietor of Ashland Farm and one of Kentucky's most notable citizens, and Anne Clay, daughter of Henry Clay, Jr. One of seven children, he was a brother of social reformer, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and of Thomas Clay McDowell, renowned Thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder and trainer who won the 1902 Kentucky Derby.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, McDowell graduated from Yale University in 1881, and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1887. That same year, McDowell began a law practice in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, setting up a partnership with Joshua Fry Bullitt, Jr., that continued to 1894. McDowell and Bullitt organized the Police Guard of Big Stone Gap.

The New York Times reported in 1901 that the author John Fox, Jr., also from Big Stone Gap, based a character in his book Blue-grass and Rhododendron: Outdoors in Old Kentucky on McDowell.^[1] The book is dedicated to McDowell, Bullitt, and Horace Ethelbert Cox, as "The First Three Captains of the Guard."^[2]

On the recommendation of Fox and Campbell Slemp,^[3] McDowell received a recess appointment from Theodore Roosevelt on November 12, 1901, to a seat vacated by John Paul on the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. His nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 18, 1901. As judge, McDowell had a home in the Diamond Hill section of Lynchburg, Virginia.^[4]

In 1902, the Times reported that Judge McDowell had sentenced a labor organizer to jail for eight months for organizing activity aimed at the Virginia Iron Coal & Coke Company.^[5]

The late Judge H. Emory Widener, Jr., in the foreword to the Washington & Lee Law Review's 1998 remembrance of Fourth Circuit judges, noted that Fox had helped convince Roosevelt to give the judgeship to McDowell, and went on to tell this story about a trial at the federal courthouse in Abingdon, Virginia:

Judge Henry Clay McDowell was presiding and, after a strenuous trial of several days, directed a verdict in favor of the defendant. The lawyer representing the plaintiff was Dan Trigg, a giant of the bar and the leading lawyer in Western Virginia. Judge McDowell bent over to tie his shoe, and the bench, at that time being elevated some two feet above the floor of the courtroom, screened him from the sight of everyone in the room. "Damn a federal judge anyhow," Mr. Trigg exclaimed, being audible to all. Judge McDowell, of course, heard the remark, but remained stooped over and left the courtroom by a door just behind the judge's chair so that no one knew he was in the room. He later summoned all the other lawyers in the courtroom to his chambers and said that he had heard Mr. Trigg's remark. He asked the lawyers if anyone in the room knew that he had heard it. When the lawyers advised him that no one had, he stated the rule that lawyers had a constitutional right to cuss the judge and, since Mr. Trigg didn't know he had been heard, he was not going to be fined.^[6]

John S. Mosby while working in the Justice Department supported McDowell for nomination to the Supreme Court, or at least to the Court of Appeals.^[7]

McDowell assumed senior status on September 1, 1931, and was succeeded by John Paul, Jr., son of his predecessor.

He died in Lexington, Kentucky, at the age of 72.

Notes and references

1. "Editorial No. 2" (PDF). The New York Times, December 21, 1901. December 21, 1901. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
2. Fox, Jr., John (1901). Blue-grass and rhododendron: outdoors in old Kentucky. Scribner's (accessed via Google Books).
3. "COLONEL CAMPBELL SLEMP, By Rose Slemp Quillen". The VaGen Web Project. Retrieved April 4, 2008.
4. "Clay Street". Diamond Hill Historical Society. Retrieved April 4, 2008.
5. "LABOR ORGANIZER CONVICTED: Sentenced to Eight Months in Prison for Organizing in Works Already in Hands of Federal Receivers, October 12, 1902" (PDF). The New York Times. October 12, 1902. Retrieved October 2, 2007.
6. "Remembering the Fourth Circuit Judges: A History from 1941 to 1998," 55 Wash. & Lee L. Rev. 471, 473 (Spring 1998).
7. Mosby, John S. (2007). Take Sides With the Truth: The Postwar Letters of John Singleton Mosby to Samuel F. Chapman. University Press of Kentucky (accessed via Google Books). ISBN 0-8131-2427-1.

External links

• Henry C. McDowell, Jr. at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• "CLAY'S GREAT-GRANDSON APPOINTED, New York Times, November 13, 1901