of the old Pennsylvania families and were among the first settlers of that State. His father-in-law was a farmer of means and prosperous business.

For the past thirty years Judge and Mrs. Bartch have been members of the Presbyterian Church and have always aided in its work and taken prominent parts in its development in Utah.

In political affairs, the Judge has ever been a staunch Republican and has consistently followed the fortunes of that party throughout his career. During the lifetime of the late President McKinley, he enjoyed the warm personal friendship of that distinguished statesman.

From an unpropitious beginning, Judge Bartch has erected a career that stands high, not only in Utah, but in the United States. His successful career as a lawyer and as a judge mark him as one of the most successful men of the West. Thrown on his own resources at an early age by the death of his parents, he has, by the dint of continuous hard work and application, erected a career that may well be a source of pride to his posterity in the years to come. A commanding presence, coupled with a judicial cast of mind, a genial and pleasant manner and a warm heart has won for him a host of good friends throughout Utah and made him one of the most popular men in the State.

FRANKLIN S. RICHARDS is a name that must ever point out one of the brightest stars that has yet dawned upon the horizon of the legal world of the West. Perhaps no profession affords a wider field for individual attainment than does the law, and this fact has attracted to it multitudes of young men from every clime since it became reduced to a recognized science and increasing civilization demanded a finer discrimination between justice and injustice. The man who rises above the mediocre in his profession must possess not only a thorough knowledge of the law; he must have a logical and resourceful mind, be a reader of human nature, and have a peculiar fitness not alone to so plead at the bar and so sway the minds of the jury as to procure for his client the desired verdict; he must pos-

sess that indefinable something called eloquence; that power over the minds and hearts of those with whom he is associated that shall make them bend to his will as the mighty tree bends before the gale that sweeps over prairie and plain; that winning personality that invests every other being with a part of itself, and makes his mind and his will theirs. Such a man will rise to the highest mountain peaks of fame and leadership, be his environment what it may. Such a mind and such a personality can no more be kept in obscurity than can the first bright, beautiful rays of the morning sun; and as those rays grow more bright and beautiful as the orb ascends the heavens, so will the career of such a man shed increasing light and increasing beneficence upon the world about him, penetrating ever farther and farther, and bringing blessings and joy to man kind generations after the man himself shall have passed from earth's scenes. Such a man as we have described is to be found in the person of Franklin S. Richards, whose name heads this article.

Mr. Richards was born in Salt Lake City, June 20, 1849, two years after the first pioneer set his foot in Salt Lake Valley and here began the erection of his home, seeking nothing better than that he be allowed to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience. Among those worthy people were President Franklin D. and Jane (Snyder) Richards, parents of our subject, a sketch of whom appears elsewhere in this work. The mother had come childless into this then uninviting wilderness, carrying with her the bitter memory of two little graves where she had laid her loved children after the exodus of the Mormons from Nauvoo, and when our subject was born, not only his frail life, but that of the mother, hung in the balance for many days. The long and wearisome journey across the plains, the hardships endured not only on that journey and later, but at the time of the exodus; the breaking of the mother heart as she saw her little ones pass out into that bourne whence none ever return, all tended to break down her health and sap her vitality, and the house in which the babe was born was a crude structure consisting of one barren adobe room, the roof thatched with