Bio: Reid, Hon. Alexander H. (1864 - 19??)

 

Contact: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

 

Surnames: Reid, Gourlie, Lindley

 

---Source: History of Marathon County Wisconsin and Representative Citizens, by Louis Marchetti, 1913.

 

Reid, Hon. Alexander H. (31 March 1864 -?)

 

                 Judge Alexander H. Reid

 

The 16th Judicial Circuit of Wisconsin consists of the counties of Marathon, Lincoln, Oneida and Vilas, with a population of 100,000 in round numbers and vast property rights. The Circuit Court in the state of Wisconsin is the only court of unlimited jurisdiction in all cases affecting personal and property rights, and is therefore as important if not more so than the Supreme Court, which is chiefly an appellate court. It is apparent, therefore, that the office of circuit judge is of the greatest responsibility as well as of the highest honor. The far greater part of all litigation ends after a full and fair trial in the Circuit Court, and only a limited number of cases are taken to the Supreme Court on appeal.  

 

Much of litigation is determined by the circuit judge by hearing the case or preliminary motions at chambers, which means at his office in the court house in the place where he resides, which in the case of Judge A. H. Reid is the city of Wausau, which practice brings many litigants and their attorneys from outside of this county to the city of Wausau. The highly important labor of Judge A. H. Reid has been mentioned in Chapter 23, entitled "Bench and Bar," and the following is a short biographical sketch supplementing what has been said under that head: Hon. Alexander H. Reid, circuit judge of the 16th Judicial District of Wisconsin, was born March 31, 1864, in Dodge County. Wis., and is a son of J. D. and Janet (Gourlie) Reid. The parents of Judge Reid were born near Glasgow, Scotland, were reared and married there and came to the United States in 1848. For a short time they resided in New York and then went to Nashville, Tenn., where the father, a stone cutter by trade, had charge of the stone work in the construction of the Capitol there. Thence he removed to Joliet, Ill., where he owned and operated stone quarries. In the fifties he went to the newly opened gold mining regions in California, and at the time of the outbreak of the Civil war he was contracting on railroad building in Iowa. He purchased a farm some time afterwards in Dodge County, Wis., which he operated during the rest of his active life and died there in 1907, at the age of eighty-six years; his wife passed away in 1905 aged eighty-three. They had ten children born to them — William, Mary, Walter, John, James, Ellen, Robert, Jessie, George, and Alexander H.

 

Alexander H. Reid was reared on the home farm in Dodge County and had good educational advantages. In 1888 he was graduated from the academic department of the University of Wisconsin, and in 1890 from the law department, in the same year being admitted to practice. Prior to this he had spent some time in the educational field as a teacher, alternating teaching and studying with farm work. He entered upon the practice of his profession at Merrill, in Lincoln County, and became a member of the law firm of Curtis, Curtis & Reid, for eighteen years practicing as a member of the Lincoln county bar. Li the summer of 1908 he was appointed to the bench, and in the spring of 1909 was elected to his present office. Judge Reid has long been a member of the county, state and American bar association. In politics he is a Republican. He has served on the library board and also on the board of education, and while living in Lincoln County was president of both bodies for a number of years. When called to the bench he left a substantial practice for higher honors and in the same year moved to Wausau.  

 

In 1891 Judge Reid was married to Miss Addie Lindley, a daughter of J. S. Lindley, of Dane county, and they have one daughter, Jeanette, who was a student in Downer College, Milwaukee. Judge Reid is a member of the Universalist Church. He belongs to the Masonic fraternity, the Knights of Pythias, the Elks and the Modem Woodmen of America, and socially is identified with the Wausau City and Wausau Country clubs.

 

 


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