Henry C McDowell, Jr

Early and family life

Born in Louisville, Kentucky as the first son of Henry Clay McDowell, and Anne Clay, daughter of Henry Clay, Jr., Henry McDowell Jr. had an elder sister Nanette (1859–1948) and four younger siblings. His father, Henry C. McDowell Sr., was one of the first Kentuckians to volunteer for the Union army in the American Civil War and became a successful businessman. In 1883, after this Henry had left home, the family moved to Ashland, Kentucky, where Henry McDowell Sr. bought a son of the noted horse Hambletonian and became proprietor of Ashland Farm. Others in the family who achieved distinction were social reformer, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge(1872-1920) and Thomas Clay McDowell (1866-1935), Thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder and trainer who won the 1902 Kentucky Derby.

Henry McDowell Jr. graduated from Yale University in 1881, and from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1887. He married Elsie Clay (1866-1939) of Hallston Spring in Scott County, Virginia on July 5, 1893. His wife was the daughter of Capt. Henry B. Clay of Lexington, Kentucky and Nannie Bradley of Tennessee, but they had no children.

Career

McDowell began practicing law in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, setting up a partnership with Joshua Fry Bullitt Jr. that continued until 1894. McDowell and Bullitt organized the "Police Guard" of Big Stone Gap. From 1887-1901, McDowell concentrated his private legal practice in Lynchburg, Virginia.

On the recommendation of John Fox Jr. and Campbell Slemp, McDowell received a recess appointment from Theodore Roosevelt on November 12, 1901, to a seat vacated by the death of John Paul on the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. His nomination was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 18, 1901. As judge, McDowell lived in Lynchburg's prestigious Diamond Hill district.

In 1902, the New York Times reported that Judge McDowell had sentenced a labor organizer to jail for eight months for organizing activity aimed at the Virginia Iron Coal & Coke Company.

The late Judge H. Emory Widener Jr., in the foreword to the Washington & Lee Law Review's 1998 remembrance of Fourth Circuit judges, noted that Fox had helped convince Roosevelt to give the judgeship to McDowell, and went on to tell this story about a trial at the federal courthouse in Abingdon, Virginia:

Judge Henry Clay McDowell was presiding and, after a strenuous trial of several days, directed a verdict in favor of the defendant. The lawyer representing the plaintiff was Dan Trigg, a giant of the bar and the leading lawyer in Western Virginia. Judge McDowell bent over to tie his shoe, and the bench, at that time being elevated some two feet above the floor of the courtroom, screened him from the sight of everyone in the room. "Damn a federal judge anyhow," Mr. Trigg exclaimed, being audible to all. Judge McDowell, of course, heard the remark, but remained stooped over and left the courtroom by a door just behind the judge's chair so that no one knew he was in the room. He later summoned all the other lawyers in the courtroom to his chambers and said that he had heard Mr. Trigg's remark. He asked the lawyers if anyone in the room knew that he had heard it. When the lawyers advised him that no one had, he stated the rule that lawyers had a constitutional right to cuss the judge and, since Mr. Trigg didn't know he had been heard, he was not going to be fined.

Former Confederate John S. Mosby, who worked in the Justice Department late in his career, supported McDowell for nomination to the Supreme Court, or at least to the Court of Appeals.

McDowell assumed senior status on September 1, 1931, and was succeeded by John Paul Jr., son of his predecessor.

Death and legacy

Judge McDowell had a heart attack and died while visiting Lexington, Kentucky on October 7, 1933, at the age of 72. His widow survived him by six years, dying in Lynchburg in 1939, but buried beside him at the Lexington Cemetery in Fayette County, Kentucky. His former house in Lynchburg (1314 Clay Street) survives and is a contributing property to the Diamond Hill Historic District.

The New York Times reported in 1901 that the author John Fox Jr., also from Big Stone Gap, based a character in his book Blue-grass and Rhododendron: Outdoors in Old Kentucky on McDowell. The book was dedicated to McDowell, Bullitt, and Horace Ethelbert Cox, as "The First Three Captains of the Guard."