D. L. SMOOT

 

 

D. L. SMOOT is a native of the Old Dominion, being born in Alexandria, in 1835.  His father was Captain Smoot, of the seafaring family, who married Miss McNeal of the old, time-honored Scottish family of the McNeals.  She is still living, in Alexandria, Virginia, at the advanced age of eighty-seven years, in the house where Gen. Lafayette was entertained upon upon his visit to this country in 1832; she is a grand-daughter of Baron McNeal, who was beheaded in Scotland for having participated in the last attempt to put the Stuarts on the throne.  Grandmother McNeal's death occurred in Illinois in 1846, in the wonderful advanced age of 117 years.

 

Our subject received his education in Virginia; pursued his legal studies in Maryland and Virginia, and after passing three examinations, was submitted to the bar in October, 1858.  He engaged in the practice of law, and the following year was elected City Attorney.  At the expiration of his term he was re-elected.  He practiced his profession there until the breaking out of the war, when he enlisted and served in the Confederate army, holding commission of Captain of Light Artillery.  After the close of the war he returned to Alexandria and resumed the practice of law and secured a large and successful business--being elected City Attorney again, and after that Commonwealth' s Attorney.  In July, 1876, he came to California and settled in San Francisco, and since then for the past fifteen years he has practiced his profession in the city.  In 1879 he was elected District Attorney of the city and county of San Francisco.

 

 

"The Bay of San Francisco" (and Its Cities And Their Suburbs) Volume 1. Lewis Publishing Company 1892. Page 442.

Submitted by: Nancy Pratt Melton.