San Joaquin County
Biographies
HON. JAMES ALEXANDER LOUTTIT
HON. JAMES ALEXANDER LOUTTIT,
of the law firm of Louttit, Woods & Levinsky, of Stockton, was born in New
Orleans, Louisiana, October 16, 1848, a son of Thomas Sinclair and Jessie Ann
(Bell) Louttit, both now living at Mokelumne Hill, Calaveras County,
California. The father, born in Scotland, July 4, 1821, came to the United
States in 1837, learned the trade of blacksmith, and was married in New
Orleans. In 1849 he came to California, tried mining a little while, but he
found the exercise of his trade more profitable, and accordingly worked in that
line nearly all his mature life, until increasing years made the labor too
arduous. He was leader of the citizens’ law and order party, or “Vigilantes,”
in Coloma in 1850. The mother, also a native of Inverness, Scotland, is a year
or two older than her husband, and has borne five children: our subject in New
Orleans, one in Scotland, and three in Calaveras County. Three are living:
Belle, now Mrs. George Chesnutwood; William R., for many years in the employ of
the Steam Navigation Company, and J. A., the subject of this sketch, all of
Stockton.
Grandfather Alexander Bell, a leader of
the Scotch Covenanters, lived to the age of ninety-seven, and his wife, Jessie
Margaret Robertson, reached the age of 103 years. The ancestral home of the
Louttits seems to have been in the Orkney Islands. Grandfather James Louttit
died at sixty-six, and his wife, Mary Sinclair, a sister of Thomas Sinclair,
for many years Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia and president of the
Hudson Bay Company, lived to be sixty-six. Aunt Mary (Louttit) Hackland died in
the Orkneys in 1886, at the age of eighty-four, leaving nine children
surviving, of whom at least one (James Hackland, of Port Natal, Africa) has
achieved distinction.
The subject of this sketch, educated in
the district schools at Mokelumne Hill, and afterward in Latin, Greek and
higher mathematics by private tuition of Rev. W. C. Mosher, a resident
clergyman, with plenty of exercise in his father’s shop as a substitute for
college gymnastics, was graduated at the State Normal School with the honors of
the class in 1864. He then taught school for three years in the Brooklyn High
School, Oakland, the first school of that grade in California outside of San
Francisco, and meanwhile read law under Porter & Holladay, of San
Francisco. Having somewhat impaired his health by too close application to
study, he went to Colorado and spent two years in mining, with the double
satisfactory result of recovering his health and enlarging his finances.
Returning to California, he invested his money in a law library, was admitted
to the bar of the Supreme Court of California in October, 1869; was
subsequently admitted to the bar by the Supreme Court of the United States,
with Hon. J. G. Carlisle, the ex-Speaker, and Hon. Thomas B. Reed, present
Speaker of the House of Representatives, as his legal sponsors.
Mr. Louttit settled down to the practice
of his profession in this city in 1871, filling the office of City Attorney
from that year until 1879. For some years he was a partner of C. H. Lindley,
now of San Francisco, under the style of Louttit & Lindley. In November,
1884, Mr. Louttit was elected to Congress on the Republican ticket, though the
district had a Democratic majority. The Congressional measure with which he was
most actively identified during his term was the extension of a free delivery
of mail, and after eight months’ labor in that direction he succeeded in having
the privilege extended to 142 cities, including Stockton. In 1885 he formed the
present law firm of Louttit, Woods & Levinsky, and on the close of his
Congressional labors Mr. Louttit returned to the practice of his profession,
declining a re-nomination in 1886.
Mr. James A. Louttit was married in
Stockton in 1872, to Miss Ada A. Cory, born in this State in 1854, a daughter
of John R. and Abbie A. (Cory) Cory, both residing in this city in 1890, the
father aged about seventy-three, and the mother seventy. Mrs. Louttit died in
1884, leaving five children of much promise: Mary B., born in 1873; John Cory,
in 1874; Thomas Sinclair, in 1876; Jessie Ada, in 1877; James A., Jr., in 1878.
Mr. Louttit was again married February 12, 1890, in Denver, Colorado, to Mrs.
Kate L. (Stuart) Palmer, a widow with one daughter, Edith, by marriage Mrs. C.
H. Shilling, of Aspen, Colorado.
Mr. Louttit is a member of Stockton Lodge,
No. 11, I. O. O. F., and with his law partner, Mr. Woods, is identified with
all the movements for the advancement of the city of Stockton and the county of
SanJoaquin (sic).
Transcribed by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
An Illustrated History of San Joaquin County,
California, Pages 559-560. Lewis Pub.
Co. Chicago, Illinois 1890.
© 2009 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
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