The first lawyer arrived in Morrison County, Minnesota, in 1854 and left in 1863. In 1876, there was one lawyer in the county, and by 1884, there were two. Lawyers came and went---a phenomena that was not uncommon in every county in this state, rural or urban. It took decades before Morrison County developed sufficiently to support a stable bar. By 1915, the county bar had ten members.

This history of the bench and bar of Morrison County appeared as a chapter in a joint history of Morrison and Todd Counties published in 1915. It names the judges and lawyers who served and practiced in Morrison County from territorial days to the eve of the First World War. The attentive reader of histories of this sort can see rough patterns of how lawyers lived and practiced in the latter half of the nineteenth century-their wanderlust, their ambition for public office (which gave them a salary and publicity), and their solitariness (few formed partnerships).

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