Preston Caplinger West

Preston Caplinger West

Assistant U.S. Attorney General, Department of Interior

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/106722080/preston_caplinger_west

Probably the most successful lawyer is he who has lived an even and quiet life of service, and in so doing has won the affection and confidence of his state and has been elevated to positions of important public trust.

Preston West, of Tulsa, is one such lawyer. In 1897 he settled in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he quickly became a leader, was selected as the attorney to incorporate the town, and later was made chairman of the Board of Freeholders who prepared its first charter. For thirty years his quiet personality, strong mind, and efficient work have made him a familiar and respected public figure in Eastern Oklahoma. His practice has been large, and his influence broad and constructive.

In 1913 he was appointed Assistant Attorney General of the United States, assigned to the Interior Department. From then until 1916 he directed the legal affairs of that Department, which employed a force of twenty-five attorneys and was engulfed in a great mass of pressing business much of which had lain untouched for years. Under the impulse of his indefatigable energy and at the cost of an enormous amount of work in which he personally led; he succeeded in bringing all the legal business of the Department up to date. Since his return to Oklahoma, he has been established as the head of one of the largest and most successful law firms in Tulsa. To-day he holds the respect and confidence of the entire bar of Oklahoma and of great numbers of the citizens of Eastern Oklahoma. He has helped contribute substantially to the honor of the Democratic Party in Oklahoma, which has won for him the appreciation of the leading spirits in that party. He is a student of law, a practitioner of the old school, careful, honest, intelligent, and successful.

Mr. West is a product of the old South. His great grandfather was a Captain in the Virginia Continental Line during the Revolutionary War. His grandfather was Preston West, of Kentucky, a breeder of fancy horses, well known, well liked and a man of great influence. His father, Preston C. West, also of Kentucky, was a physician, who came to Arkansas as a young man and was one of the most beloved men of his adopted state; a high-spirited, but genial, helpful, friendly man, who was the adviser and counsellor of all the people of his community. Mr. West's maternal grandfather was Gustavus Hammond Wilcox, a Connecticut Yankee, and a leader of the Mississippi bar in ante bellum days, drawn thither by the hospitality and rich atmosphere of the South. There he married Miss Jane Wigginton of Virginia, of Scotch-Welch ancestry, and moved with her to Mississippi in the early days of that country. The mother of Mr. West, Winifred Todd Wilcox, inherited all the southern attributes which had drawn her father and mother to Mississippi. She, like the man she loved and later married, was strongly partisan in her loyalty to the traditions of the old South. Very intellectual and extraordinarily educated for her time, she was gifted in art, music, and other cultural attainments. Dr. West, her husband, was also a splendidly educated man. So both parents of Preston West were educated in college and were trained in the finer traditions, customs, and manners of the old South.

Naturally, therefore, the boy inherited a passionate love for the South. Born in the home of his grandmother at Rodney, Mississippi, August 19, 1868, he has always been proud of being a product of Mississippi, Virginia, and Kentucky, all southern strongholds. The Reconstruction period after the Civil War made the war the main topic of conversation. His father and his mother's five brothers all had been Confederate soldiers. The boy listened with glowing eyes to the valorous deeds of the Confederate army and was deeply impressed by the heroic figures of its leaders and the terrible price that the South had paid during the war.

His boyhood was spent in the delta where the Arkansas and White rivers flow into the Mississippi. In this home he saw the steamboats ply up and down the waterways; and many rides he took on the White, the Arkansas, and the Mississippi rivers, and at least once a year up the Ohio to Louisville. The deep blasts of the steamboat whistles were a constant challenge to his imagination, and his earliest ambition was to be chief clerk on one of the big boats that passed up and down the rivers.

But when he was eleven years of age the family moved to La Grange, Arkansas, which was ten miles from the Mississippi River. This separation from the water caused his childish fancy to lose its vitality, and gradually his mind adjusted to newer and more worthy ambitions. In this adjustment his mother took a commanding part, for she was then, as she had been from his infancy, his sole teacher and guide. He had not attended school because while he lived in the delta no school had been available; but his mother, drawing from her full store house of training and education, had given him extraordinary schooling. Not only had he completed the fifth-grade readers, but he had read aloud to his mother such books as David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Pendennis, and other products of masters like Dickens, Thackeray, and their equals. So, even though he was but eleven years of age and had never been in school, he was placed in high school by his parents as soon as they were settled in their new home at La Grange.

The work in high school, pleasant, profitable, and absorbing, occupied four years of the lad's time. He was studious, interested in intellectual affairs of all kinds, and was an omnivorous reader, with an inherited taste for things of refinement and substantiality, so that his high school years were so many years of satisfaction and pleasure. He grew both in physical and mental stature during those years, and at sixteen stood on the threshold of manhood, eager and unspoiled. He, as well as his parents who had discussed the matter many times, understood that he was to be sent to college-a southern college steeped in the sentiments and traditions of the old South. Nothing short of such an institution could satisfy his ardent spirit, or the desires of his parents, who were so strongly attached to their beloved land.

The Wests were Presbyterians, and at Clarksville, Tennessee, was the Southwestern University, a Presbyterian school, in which one of Winifred West's friends was a professor the school for Preston; and in the fall of 1884, Dr. West enrolled him there. Dr. John N. Waddell, formerly Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, was Chancellor, Dr. Joseph R. Wilson, the father of Woodrow Wilson, was Professor of Theology, and several other men, among the strongest educators in the South, were on the faculty. The school was splendid, a wonderful place in which to stimulate the finest religious and educational development of a sensitive, idealistic lad like Preston West.

For the first time thrown entirely upon his own resources, without the aid or counsel of his parents, both of whom had lived in close communion with him and had watched carefully his every act, young West reveled in the sense of independence. He liked to feel that he was living his own life and was responsible entirely to himself for his advancement and growth. He threw himself ardently into his courses and succeeded well. Also, he became active in student affairs of all sorts-in the debating societies, on the athletic field, and in the social gatherings of the students. The first year he won the improvement medal of the literary society to which he belonged. In his junior year he was one of the six orators selected by the faculty to compete for the Faculty Oratorical Medal. The next year, as representative of his society for the Joint Medal, he won first place. He was on the staff of the college paper, was taken into the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity; he represented the university as a long-distance runner on the track team, and played baseball and football, after the somewhat loose fashion in which these games were played in those days.

The South has been noted as the cradle of oratory; and one of the surest and most respected avenues of achieving distinction in oratory then was law. Young West listened to many orators, both in the university and out, and attended public gatherings, trials, and meetings of all sorts at which he could see and hear men speak. By the time he graduated from the university, which was in 1888, he was convinced that the profession of law was the one for him. In Fort Smith, Arkansas, was a strong lawyer, T. P. Winchester, for whom he

formed an attachment and friendship that continued throughout the remaining years of Mr. Winchester's life. In his office West secured employment in the hope that he could acquire training for the legal profession. Only a few months were required of him in that office, however, to understand that he should secure a regular legal education if he desired to become a strong lawyer. He left Fort Smith and entered the University of Virginia, the largest and best law school in the South.

For two years he worked industriously at his law course, optimistically looking forward to the time when he could graduate and take his place among the lawyers of ability. But his hopes were dashed to the ground by the abrupt death of his father, which took him out of school. Shortly thereafter he again entered the office of T. P. Winchester, but this time as a partner, for even with his interrupted course at the University of Virginia, he was able to pass the state bar examination before the Supreme Court of Arkansas. Thus, at twenty-one years of age he became the full-pledged junior member of a law firm-Winchester and West.

Hoping for more rapid advancement if he relied wholly on his own efforts, at the end of a year he withdrew and began to practice alone. His single-handed venture did not turn out a profitable one, and shortly he accepted a place as a law clerk in the office of Sandels and Hill, the leading law firm of Fort Smith. After a year and a half, upon the death of Mr. Sandels, he was taken into the firm, which then became Hill and West. With this firm he continued to practice until 1897, when he married Miss Bessie Douglas Shelby and moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma. This town was selected by him because it was the leading litigation center and the most important United States Court town in Indian Territory. The Dawes Commission had been established there, and all the legal controversies surrounding Indian affairs were either determined or considered by the Commission before they were sent to Washington.

Before setting out for Muskogee he concluded arrangements for a partnership with William T. Hutchings, a practicing attorney in Muskogee, and this partnership, under the title of Hutchings and West, continued until 1903. From then until 1913 he practiced, sometimes alone, and at other times with other attorneys. In 1913 he was appointed Assistant Attorney General of the United States, and nine months later was made Solicitor for the Interior Department. Upon his return to Oklahoma, after three years in Washington, he settled in Tulsa where he formed the law firm of West, Sherman, Davidson, and Moore. In 1925 the partnerships of Gibson and Hull, of Muskogee, and West, Sherman and Davidson, of Tulsa, were consolidated, resulting in the new firm of West, Gibson, Sherman, Davidson, and Hull, Mr. Moore having died in the meantime. Since 1925 this firm has maintained offices in both Tulsa and Muskogee.

There has been little of the spectacular in the life of Preston C. West. He is one of those men who came to Oklahoma in its early days and has grown steadily through the years. He has been an attorney whose practice has been large and important. A considerable part of the legal controversies which have affected the history and development of Eastern Oklahoma have been tried by him or his firms. The bound briefs of cases in which he has participated amount to more than forty volumes. During his early days in Muskogee, he was one of the most active and public-spirited men in that town. Almost every movement which had to do with the development and growth of Muskogee had its beginning in his mind or owed much of its success to his efficient efforts in its behalf. He took an active part in the political, governmental, and civic life of his community and was a prominent figure in the affairs of the bar associations, national, state, and city, to which he belonged. He traveled widely, appeared in courts all over the state, and was respected for his courage, vigor, and uniform gentleness and courtesy.

Among the important cases in which he participated was the litigation between the Cherokee Nation and the host of claimants for citizenship who appeared when Congress authorized the Dawes Commission to hear their claims and provide appeals to the courts; defeating in these cases the majority of citizenship applicants, and also maintaining in the Supreme Court of the United States the constitutionality of the legislation which had been enacted by Congress on the subject.

Another of his cases was that of McGannon versus State excel Trapp, which shortly after statehood laid down the lines upon which our state inheritance tax laws have since been interpreted. Many others have gone to the Supreme Court of the United States.

While Mr. West was Assistant Attorney General and Solicitor for the Department of Interior, he had many interesting cases which passed through the courts of the District of Columbia and were argued by him in the Supreme Court of the United States. Also he handled many matters of interest which did not enter the courts, such as those dealing with the government railroad which was built in Alaska, the fishing and other rights of Northwestern Indians, harbor improvements in the Hawaiian Islands, and the settlement of the mutual water rights of the United States and Canada, in certain streams which arose on one side or the other of the United States-Canadian border and then flowed into or across some other part of the other's territory.

Mr. West is the type of lawyer who carefully prepares every step of a case in which he is interested. For years he has devoted his practice to civil matters only, but in his youth was quite successful as a criminal lawyer. He has always enjoyed the trial of a case, and, except for the type of associations in which as a criminal lawyer he was frequently placed, enjoyed the stimulating excitement of criminal practice. All through the years he has been an active trial lawyer but appears to no less advantage in his own office, where his well-trained mind and great store of knowledge enable him to render very valuable service to his clients. He is a man of modest tastes, dignified and reserved, who personifies the attributes of courtliness and hospitality of the true Southern gentlemen. His speech is filled with rich gleanings from history, literature, and science, with all of which he has been familiar from boyhood. His is the attitude of the educated, intellectual being, who looks upon life with composure and understanding. He analyzes men and their affairs and applies to them a mellow and wholesome philosophy which is the product of years of study and close observation.

Through his son, Gustavus W. West, he has expressed his early ambition to enter West Point, as Gustavus is a graduate of that military academy and a Second Lieutenant in the Fourth Cavalry of the United States Army. He has a daughter, Winifred, who is in her senior year in Sweet Briar College, of Sweet Briar, Virginia. He and his wife have reared and given an education to his wife's niece, who is now Mrs. William S. Cochran.

Among the professional and social contacts that he maintains is membership in the American branch of the International Law Association, the American Bar Association, and the Tulsa and Muskogee Bar Associations, the Tulsa, Town and Country, and University Clubs, of Tulsa, and the Colonnade Club, University of Virginia. His consistent and constructive work on behalf of the Episcopal Church, to which he belongs, has caused him to be made Chancellor of the district of Oklahoma. He is a Mason and an Elk, and member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

One of the strongest members of the Oklahoma Bar since the day he entered Muskogee, Mr. West has practiced law as only the man of gentleness and fine breeding can practice it with honor, integrity, and the determination to give a full measure of service. For thirty years he has practiced in a new, growing state, where methods were unsettled, courts were new, and passions ran high, without developing a single blemish on his high reputation. Though he has never been a candidate for any office, has lived without ostentation and without posing, free from any conscious effort to secure public recognition, all through the years he has been more than a local figure. He has practiced law because he loved the legal profession; and has held duty and honor before him at every step. He is a splendid representative of the finest ethics, attitudes, and purposes of the bar of Oklahoma.

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-history-of-the-can-open... Inventor]

The first electric can opener, based on the cutting wheels principle, able to open more than 20 cans for a minute, was patented by Preston C. West in the USA on December 1 1931 but with scarce diffusion (US Patent 1.834.563).