Judge Oliver S. Witherby (1815-1896)
Judge Witherby was one of the most important men in the community, in his day, as he is yet one of the best remembered. He was born near Cincinnati Ohio, February 19, 1815. Received his education at the Miami University, where he graduated in 1836. Studied law in Hamilton, Ohio, and was admitted to practice in 1840. At the breaking out of the Mexican War, he was appointed first lieutenant and served about a year, when he was invalided and discharged. Served as prosecuting attorney of Hamilton County and acted as editor of the Hamilton Telegraph. In February, 1849, came to San Diego as quartermaster and commissary of the U. S. Boundary Commission, reaching San Diego June 1. Liking the country, he decided to remain, and the people of San Diego County elected him to represent them in the first assembly, at Monterey, in 1850. He was appointed by this legislature judge of the newly created first district court and served the full term of three years. In 1853 he was appointed collector of customs for San Diego and adjoining counties and filled a term of four years. In 1857 he purchased the Escondido Rancho and for more than ten years was a successful farmer and stock raiser. In 1868 he sold his ranch and removed to San Diego. He was a stockholder and director of the early banks of San Diego, and in 1879, upon the consolidation of the Bank of San Diego and the Commercial Bank, he was chosen president of the new institution and served several years. He invested largely in real estate and showed his faith in the city's future at all times. He was prominently connected, as an investor and executive officer, with most of the important enterprises of his day. At the collapse of the great boom and the subsequent. bank failures, he was "caught hard" and lost practically his whole fortune, although he had been rated at half a million. He died December 18, 1896.
Besides the offices mentioned, he served as public administrator from 1860 to 1867. He was also intimately connected with the San Diego & Gila R. R., and was its president in 1858 and for some years after, Judge Witherby was a genial and popular man.
[text above from William Ellsworth Smythe's History of San Diego]
Oliver S. Witherby was the "Father of San Diego Jurisprudence". He was this area's first American lawyer, its first representative in the state assembly, and, by the latter, chosen as first judge of the San San Diego-Los Angeles judicial district. College-trained, stable, popular, successful, the man devoted his life to civic leadership, and became the first local lawyer to have practiced over 50 years.Unlike some of his contemporaries, Witherby was no mere migrating fortune seeker when he arrived in San Diego on June 1, 1849. He was Quartermaster of the United States Boundary Commission directed by his fellow Ohio lawyer, John B. Weller. (The latter became California's U. S. Senator, 1852, and her Governor, 1857).
Born near Cincinnati, Ohio, February 19, 1815, 0. S. Witherby was graduated from Miami University, and four years later, In 1940, was admitted to the Bar. A Lieutenant, he was injured in the Mexican War. Thereafter he was prosecuting attorney, and a newspaper editor, in Hamilton County, Ohio.
Witherby gave up the judgeship at the close of 1852. His name was not on the ballot. Be became federal collector of customs at this port, 1853-57. During some of the latter period, and also in l858, he was a county Supervisor. From 1860-67 he was Public Administrator, but lived at his Rancho Escondido.
San Diego's newspaper of the 1850's portrays Witherby as a successful game hunter, executive of a wagon road project to San Bernardino, and one who did considerable coastal traveling by ship. Additional information about this judge, and his judicial succes. sors, will be found in biographical files of the San Diego County Law Library, The index to "San Diego's LL.B." also should be consulted.
As judge, Witherby sat in several celebrated cases. As counsel, he was prominent for many years. As citizen, he generally was made presiding officer of civic meetings. As a man he never married, but was esteemed by his fellows and loved by their children. As banker and business leader he became wealthy, although he suffered financially, and perhaps in popularity, in the post-boom latter years. His character is reflected in such subtle things as the high quality of the library inventoried in his estate, the gifts of most of his assets to charity, and the professional prestige that was his from 1849 until his death in 1896.
The "Father of San Diego Jurisprudence" actually served one of the shortest tenures on the Bench in a period of half a century. But he outlived five courthouses, and most of the district judges who succeeded him. Many of the enactments that he first helped to make as a legislator, to interpret as a judge, and to expound as an advocate, continue to this day as effective California law.
[from San Diego's LL.B. (Legal Lore & the Bar) by Leland Ghent Stanford, 1968, page 67]
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