San
Joaquin County
Biographies
LAWRENCE EDWARDS
A
distinguished attorney, who has added luster to the San Joaquin County Bar, is
Lawrence Edwards, junior member of the well-known law firm of Messrs. Tye &
Edwards, at Stockton. He was born at Los
Angeles on May 12, 1887, the son of Robert L. and Clarissa (Smith) Edwards and
grandson of ex-Governor Edwards of Missouri, early settlers in the San Joaquin
Valley. The father served a term as
public administrator of San Joaquin County and is now farming near Linden. Lawrence Edwards was reared in Stockton,
where he attended the public schools and then entered the Polytechnic high
school, San Francisco, from which he was graduated with the class of 1905. After spending one year at St. Mary’s
College, Oakland, he took up the study of law in Hastings Law School and
graduated with the class of ’12, when he received the L. L. B. degree.
The same year he opened a law office
in Stockton, and in 1915 he was elected on the Democratic ticket assemblyman of
the State Legislature, and he was re-elected in 1917. He introduced and put through the bill for
the erection of the State Armory on North California Street, Stockton, the only
one, by the way, to be built in California in recent years. He also worked for the improvements in the
reclamation and irrigation districts, particularly in the Delta section, thus
making a very good legislative record; and when the World War called for the
assistance of the Americans, he was attached to the 91st Division at
Camp Lewis, in the officers’ training school, and later was transferred to Camp
Taylor, Kentucky. He received his
commission as second lieutenant and was assigned to the 71st Field
Artillery, 11th Division, at Camp Knox, Kentucky. Shortly after he had received his commission
the Armistice was signed.
Lieutenant Edwards then returned to
Stockton; and in 1919 he formed a partnership with Hugh J. Tye, under the firm
name of Tye & Edwards. He is a
member of the Board of Trustees of the Preston State School, at Ione; belongs
to Stockton Parlor No. 7, of the N. S. G. W.; and is a member of the Anteros
Club, the Yosemite Club, the Stockton Golf and Country Club, and Karl Ross Post
of the American Legion, of which he was first president, serving two terms.
At Stockton in 1914, Mr. Edwards was
married to Miss Margaret L. Reid, a native of Scotland, who was reared in
Stockton; and their union has been blessed with one daughter, Joanne L.
Edwards. Mr. Edwards is developing two
ranches in the Linden section of the county; he recently planted a walnut
orchard, and he has had for four years a dairy ranch of eighty acres, with
twenty-five cows. He is a member of the
San Joaquin County Bar Association and of the Phi Alpha Delta Fraternity.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1396. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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