Most people believe the Sacramento County Bar Association was founded in 1927, when a gentleman by the name of Herbert E. White served as the first President of the Association. And most people would be correct. But what most people don’t know is that before there was a Sacramento County Bar Association, there was just the Sacramento Bar Association, sans the County.

Founded in June of 1918, the Sacramento Bar Association consisted of approximately 22 members, almost half of which served on the 10 member Bar Council. I say approximately, because both State and Federal Court Judges (including U.S. Supreme Court Justices) were allowed to join free of charge, making the exact number of members impossible to calculate since total membership was couched only in terms of the total amount of dues paid to date, or a whopping $110.

At the time, membership in the Association was cheap, but by no means easy. Any State Bar member with five bucks burning a hole in their pocket could secure their admission to the Sacramento Bar on an annual basis (lifetime memberships could also be had at the bargain basement price of only $50), provided, of course, they produced sufficient references. In addition to completing an exhaustive application form, which included, among other things, the applicant’s date and place of birth, under-graduate degree, law school admission, prior work history and record of any public service, would-be members had to provide references from at least ”two prominent attorneys or judges in the locality” where they last worked. No application for membership could be approved, however, absent a majority vote of the full Council, which, of course, begs the question: who voted for their membership applications?

Until recently, little, if anything, was known about this forerunner of the Sacramento County Bar Association. However, a turn-of-the-century binder containing the original by-laws and Council minutes of the newly formed Bar Association was recently discovered by the building manager of 901 H Street, where the County Bar is currently located.

According to the original by-laws, the primary purpose of the Association was to “maintain the honor and dignity” of the legal profession, to increase the profession’s “usefulness” in the adminstration of justice and to “cultivate social intercourse” among the Association’s members. I don’t know whatever happened to the honor and dignity part, but as far as I’m concerned you can never cultivate too much social intercourse among the members, ever. But that’s just me.

Other purposes of the Association included, but certainly were not limited to: 1) “watch[ing] over” the Sacramento County Law Library; 2) aiding and assisting members of the Bar who, through sickness, illness or any other condition beyond their control, are no longer able to continue to engage in the practice of law; 3) to provide pro bono legal services for “worthy” applicants in need and to maintain an office for that express purpose; 4) to investigate and prosecute any “complaints, grievances and criticisms” filed with the Association against any member of the Bar by any court or official body (I think the State Bar has taken over that function); 5) to provide for “the entertainment of the professional assemblages” of the Association (there’s that social intercourse thing again); and 6) to examine, with the approval of the Third District Court of Appeal, the qualifications and moral fitness of all applications for admission to the Bar and to report “any adverse results” to the court.

Like most fledgling Bar Associations -- and perhaps some not so fledgling -- the Sacramento Bar Association had its share of miscues and false starts. My personal favorite, if for no other reason than it is so quintessentially typical, is that Mr. A.M. Seymour, the new Vice President, was absent from the very first meeting of the newly formed Bar Council because, in the words of the minutes, he “received no notice of the meeting.” Perhaps Mr. Seymour failed to get the memo because the meeting, pursuant to Council rules and regulations, was suppose to be at the County Law Library, not the Capitol National Bank Building where it was held.

The last entry for the Sacramento Bar Association is dated May 24, 1924, in which the entire minutes are devoted to the passing of Association member Wilbur F. George. It is unclear, at this point, whether there is any direct link between the two organizations, since nothing in the recorded history of either organization directly ties the two groups together.

What is clear, however, is that those who formed the Sacramento Bar Association were not young men and that in addition to being devoted to the law, they were also very much devoted to each other. A.M. Seymour, the Vice President who missed the very first meeting, died in 1924, while the Honorable Grove L. Johnson, the Association’s first and seemingly only president, died in 1926, a year before the County Bar was formed. In flipping through the pages of the past, far too many of them have to do with the passing of Association members.

And say what you will about the tenor of the times -- exclusiity, lack of diversity, all male club -- there was, at least, on the part of these Association members, a commitment to certain traits of character which, sadly, are not as commonly associated with the practice of law today as they once were. A particularly poignant section of the resolution honoring the memory of Mr. Wilbur F. George illustrates the point best. It goes something like this:

Wilbur George exemplified in very high degree those sturdy, industrious, self-reliant American traits that have made this Nation what it is and what it is hoped it will always be -- a country where all may aspire and each may reach the gold that lies at the end of an industrious and well spent life. He made his own career unaided by fortune of powerful influence and soon attained a position of eminence at the Bar, and held a rank as counselor of which any lawyer might well be proud. He was faithful and loyal in every relation and walk of life. In all his professional activities he was thorough, painstaking, accurate. He was a man of the highest ideals, hating with all the ferver (sic) of his ardent nature, cant and hypocrisy in all its forms, and believing that worth and virtue were the only characteristics that entitled a man to esteem and honor, and in his whole earthly existence, from his early school days to the hour when his eyes were closed in death, he personified those traits of honesty, loyalty and industry that open a career of honor and usefulness to all who are willing to pay the price that success in its noblest and highest form demands.

I would have been proud to have had Mr. Wilbur F. George as an SCBA member.

July / August 2006