San Luis Obispo County
Biographies
HON.
LOUIS McMURTRY
HON.
LOUIS McMURTRY. Born in Kentucky in 1837, at the age of
fifteen years Louis McMurtry came to California with
his father in 1852, and at once entered the schools in the locality of his
parents’ home. Later taking up the study
of law, he finally went to Tennessee and entered the Columbia Law College,
where he completed his course and was admitted to the bar in St. Joseph,
Mo. From there he went to Montana, where
he practiced for a time and then returned to Missouri. After his marriage, which occurred in that
state, he again went to Montana, carrying on a law practice there for nine
years, and for several years served as district attorney and as representative
to the legislature.
As his father had
settled permanently in California Mr. McMurtry also
determined to take up life in the west.
Settling in San Luis Obispo he resumed the practice of law, and for one
term served as district attorney. While
serving his first term as superior judge his death occurred, February 11, 1883,
at the age of forty-six years.
In St. Joseph, Mo., in 1866, Mr. McMurtry married Mary E. Reichard,
a native of Maryland. After the death of
her husband she took her children to Oakland to educate them and lived there
about twelve years, at the end of which time she removed to the ranch of three
hundred and sixty acres which Mr. McMurtry had
inherited from his father’s estate, and here she still resides. The family comprises three sons, all of whom
are born in Montana. Guy is county
surveyor of Sutter county; Louis is superintendent of
the General Electric Company Warehouse No. 1, of San Francisco; and Ralph is
superintending the management of the home property. All of the sons are active Democrats.
Transcribed by
Doralisa Palomares.
Source:
“History of the State of California and
Biographical Record of the Sacramento Valley, California” by J. M.
Guinn. Pages
599. Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1906.
© 2017 Doralisa Palomares.