Los Angeles County
Biographies
ALFRED J. MORGANSTERN
MORGANSTERN, ALFRED J., Attorney-at-Law, San Diego, California, was born at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, April 30, 1869, the son of Jacob Morganstern and Henrietta (May) Morganstern. He has been twice married. His first wife was Katharine Donnelly, whom he married at Eau Claire, March 22, 1889. She died after bearing him two children, Josephine (now the wife of Dr. R. J. McAdory of Los Angeles), and Laura (now Mrs. E. M. Harris of Pittsburg). His second marriage was to Bertha Edgington Strouse at San Francisco. February 24, 1902, and to them there has been born a son, A. J. Morganstern, Jr.
Mr. Morganstern received his primary education in the public school of Pittsburg and was graduated from the high school of St. Paul, Minnesota. He had mastered stenography and shortly after leaving school was appointed to the position of Court Stenographer. While serving in this capacity he read law and upon attaining his majority, he was admitted to practice in the courts of Wisconsin.
Within a few months after he began practice he was called in as associate counsel for the Wisconsin Central Railroad in the settlement of lieu land cases by which the railroad recovered an immense amount of land. This case, which was one of the most important in the history of Wisconsin jurisprudence up to that time, resulted from squatters taking possession of lands owned by the railroad and Mr. Morganstern aided in the passage of a grant by Congress by which the company received several million acres of land in lieu of those which had been taken by outside parties.
In 1891, closely following the settlement of the lieu lands litigation, Mr. Morganstern moved to San Francisco and after admission to the courts of California, began practice there. He remained in that city about fifteen years, during fourteen of which he was in close affiliation with the political leaders of the day. In the early nineties he defended certain legislators who were mentioned in connection with the workings of the Coyote Scalp Bill, a California statute providing a bounty for all the animals slain within the State limits.
It was charged at the time that the Legislature had been generally corrupted and Mr. Morganstern, by means of a subpoena, telegraphed to the State line, caused the arrest of an express messenger and his return to Sacramento with a shipment of telegrams bearing on the charges. More than fifteen thousand telegrams were read by the investigating committee, with the result that Mr. Morganstern’s clients were declared not guilty of the acts with which they were charged.
During his many years of activity in the ranks of the San Francisco Republican organization, Mr. Morganstern drafted numerous pieces of legislation which stand today upon the Statute Books of California, relating to the method and conduct of elections and the government of municipalities. He began to withdraw from politics about 1900, and now devotes himself almost exclusively to practice.
In 1905 he moved to Los Angeles and practiced there for about three years, when he moved to San Diego, where he engaged in practice. He has had unusually success in both civil and criminal cases, attaining a degree of prominence in the legal profession.
During his days of political activity, Mr. Morganstern was on the county and State central committees of the Republican party, but never held public office. He was a personal friend of President McKinley, whose guest he was upon numerous occasions during the Ohioan’s occupancy of the White House, and in 1898 made a tour of the South with him as his personal guest.
He is a member of South Gate Lodge No. 320, F. & A. M., and is dictator of the San Diego Lodge, Loyal Order of Moose.
Transcribed
by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 664,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2011 Joyce
Rugeroni.
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BIOGRAPIES