Alfred Conkling Coxe, Sr

Biography

Coxe was born in Auburn, New York on May 20, 1847. His legal career began with private practice in Utica from 1868. In 1870 he entered the firm of Conkling, Holmes & Coxe, of Utica, composed of Roscoe Conkling, then United States Senator, ex-Judge Sidney T. Holmes, and Mr. Coxe. He continued in private practice to 1882. He also served as manager of a state hospital in Utica 1880 to 1882.

In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur nominated Coxe as judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. Coxe served as a trial-level judge of that court for twenty years, until 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt promoted him to an appellate position on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, headquartered in Manhattan. Coxe served on that court for 15 years, retiring from the bench in 1917. He died in 1923.

Legacy

Coxe was the grandson of Alfred Conkling, who served as a U.S. Representative from upstate New York and a judge in the Northern District, and nephew of Roscoe Conkling, who was a Congressman and Senator from New York and boss of the state's Republican political machine. He was also the nephew of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, the Episcopal bishop of Western New York, and grandson of abolitionist minister Samuel Hanson Cox. Coxe's son, Alfred Conkling Coxe Jr., also became a federal judge, serving on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1929 to 1957. Another son, Howard Coxe, was a newspaperman and novelist, and his grandson Louis O. Coxe was a poet and playwright best known for writing the Broadway version of Billy Budd.