Richard Russell Sr.

Richard Brevard Russell Sr. (April 27, 1861 – December 3, 1938) was an American lawyer, legislator, jurist, and candidate for political office.

Richard Russell Sr.
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia
In office 1923–1938
Preceded by	William H. Fish
Succeeded by	Charles S. Reid
Personal details
Born	Richard Brevard Russell April 27, 1861 Marietta, Georgia, U.S.
Died	December 3, 1938 (aged 77) Atlanta, Georgia
Cause of death	Heart attack
Spouse(s)	Marie Louise Tyler ​ ​ (m. 1883; died 1885)​ Ina Dillard ​ (m. 1891)​
Children	15, including: Richard B. Russell Jr. Robert Lee Russell

Early life, education and family

Russell was born in Marietta, Georgia in 1861. He attended the University of Georgia UGA in Athens, Georgia and graduated in 1879 with a Bachelor of Arts degree at the age of eighteen and with a Bachelor of Laws degree from the UGA School of Law the following year. While at UGA, he was a member of the school's Supreme Court.

Russell's first wife was Marie Louise Tyler. They married in 1883; however, Marie died two years later during the delivery of a stillbirth.

In 1891, Russell wed a second time to Ina Dillard from Athens, Georgia. The couple moved to Winder, Georgia in 1894 and then further east in 1902 to an area that would become eventually be designated by the Georgia General Assembly as Russell, Georgia. The Russell family home in that community is now on the National Register of Historic Places.[1]

Richard and Ina had fifteen children. Their oldest son, Richard B. Russell Jr., was a governor of Georgia and a long-serving and powerful member of the United States Senate. A younger son, Robert Lee Russell, served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Fraternal orders

Russell was fond of involvement in fraternal benefit societies, especially the Royal Arcanum. He held a number of offices in the groups; provided legal services for them, and was frequently elected as a delegate to their conventions, and would take Ina and one or more of his children with him on these expenses-paid trips. This involvement would wane after he went into legal practice in later years.[2] Russell was also close to the Georgia branch of the Ku Klux Klan, and often conferred with Klan leadership and Klan-affiliated governor Clifford Walker on state policy. When Russell expressed his desire to run for the United States Senate in 1924, the Klan dissuaded him, informing the Chief Justice that the organization was already backing incumbent Senator William Julius Harris.[3]

Public service

At age twenty-one, Russell was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives (1882) as a representative of Clarke County, Georgia. He was elected at age twenty-seven to the position of solicitor general for the Western Circuit of the Superior Courts of Georgia, a seven-county judicial circuit. Russell was subsequently elected to judicial positions in numerous Georgia courts including the Georgia Court of Appeals (elected in 1907 and chief justice of that court from 1913 to 1916) and the Supreme Court of Georgia on which he served as Chief Justice for his entire sixteen-year career (1922 to 1938) in that position. Russell was the only person to serve on both the Georgia Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of Georgia until Keith Blackwell's appointment in 2012.

Russell ran multiple unsuccessful gubernatorial and United States congressional campaigns: two Georgia gubernatorial elections (1906 and 1910), a U.S. House of Representatives election (1916), and a U.S. Senate election (1926).

Death

Richard B. Russell Sr. died in 1938 of a heart attack at Atlanta, Georgia and was buried in the Russell family plot behind their house in the Russell Community.

Sources

• Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 2002, Robert A. Caro, pp. 165–167,204 ISBN 978-0-394-72095-1
• New Georgia Encyclopedia entry for Richard B. Russell Sr.
• History of the University of Georgia by Thomas Walter Reed, Thomas Walter Reed, Imprint: Athens, Georgia : University of Georgia, ca. 1949, pp. 1130-1135

References

1. Seibert, David. "Russell House historical marker". GeorgiaInfo: an Online Georgia Almanac. Digital Library of Georgia. Retrieved 7 November 2016.
2. Russell, Sally. A Heart For Any Fate: The Biography Of Richard Brevard Russell Sr. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2004; pp. 60, 145-46, 150-51; 212
3. Chalmers, David Mark (1987). Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (3rd ed.). Durham: Duke University Press. p. 72.