JOSHUA E. STEPHENS

 

J. E. Stephens, County Attorney

 

JOSHUA E. STEPHENS.

     Joshua E. Stephens, an aged attorney, who has been on the down grade of prosperity for several years, died at his home 930 N. Walker street shortly after midnight last night. Judge Stephens as he was called has had a varied career in life. The aged man was 73 years old, and was born in Alabama.

     At the age of five years, he moved with his parents to Cooper County, Missouri, where his father engaged in farming and cattle raising. Here he was educated in the common schools, later attended college, taking the law course, he was one of the men who established the town of Bunceton, Mo.

     After a few years practice in Cooper County, he moved to Cedar County, Missouri where he continued to practice law at Stockton, and to conduct his stock farm, near that city. He was active in Democratic politics, and was elected to two terms as prosecuting attorney of that county. He also served one term on the circuit bench of that county.

     A fire at Stockton, caused the complete loss of his immense law library and one financial reverse followed another until his farm was gone. In 1890 of the same year he lost his farm, and his law library, he moved to Webb city and engaged in the practice of law here.

     He was already ageing, from his losses and the excessive use of liquor, and he never established enough foothold here than to gain just a small practice. For years he ecked out a livelihood by his divorce cases and minor cases in circuit court and on the justice courts.

     After his feeble health and advancing age, made it impossible to support his family, he was turned out of his home, in this city, and his family refused to care for him. For nearly 4 years, the feeble old man, used the tack room of Justice Cresswell's office as a sleeping room, and in the winter his only chance of a place by the fireside was at Judge Cresswell's office, together with George Taylor, another man deserted by his family when his fortune was gone, and who was just this week admitted to the Nevada insane asylum, and it is barely possible that he will live but a few weeks longer.

     Neither of these men ever went hungry, so long as Judge Cresswell remained in office. Judge Cresswell and others in this city always saw to it that if these men were unable to work to earn a few dollars, that their material comforts were looked after, at least. Recently, Mrs. Stephens gave her consent for the old Judge to come back home and live in one room of the house, where he has lived for several months, doing his own cooking and caring for himself, as best he might, as he was scarcely able to get about, suffering from rheumatism and locomotor ataxia.

     He has been in a dangerous condition the past two weeks, and the end was not unexpected.

     Funeral services will be conducted at 10:00 o'clock tomorrow morning at the residence, and burial will be made in the Carterville cemetery.

     Judge Stephen's wife claims to be a first cousin of Ex. Governor Lon V. Stephens. The judge always told his friends that his father and father of the Ex. Governor were first cousins.

Web City Register, Webb City, Missouri; Saturday 17 July 1915 page 4.

 

     Judge Joshua E. Stephens, a cousin of Former Governor Lon V. Stephens, and a former circuit judge of Cedar county, is dead at Webb City, of Bright's disease.

The Jerico Springs Optic, Jerico Springs, Missouri; Friday 30 July 1915 page 1.

 

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