Back to SketchesFrank
Eichelberger and D. H. Payne were not among the earliest, but may be classed
as among the early lawyers of Davis County, for they were members of its bar for
a period of nearly fifty years, and I knew them all personally.
Frank Eichelberger,
I knew from the time he was a very young man. His father was a hotelkeeper;
having been the proprietor of the principal hotel in Muscatine in the early
sixties, he became that of the Ottumwa House, formerly kept by John Potter.
Frank was not much beyond his majority when he followed the family to Ottumwa.
He was some four or five years my junior, and as we were both young and
congenial, soon became and continued fast friends. He received his education in
the common schools, and when but little more than twenty, was the local editor
of the Muscatine Journal, a connection which continued for some four years. He
was for a short time an army correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. In 1866 he
began his legal studies with Judge Morris J. Williams, at Ottumwa, was duly
admitted to the bar and began the practice with Henry C. Traverse, and removed
to Bloomfield. Later Mr. Payne was taken into the firm, under the name of
Traverse, Payne & Eichelberger. When Traverse was elected judge, the firm
became Payne & Eichelberger, and so continued, I think, until Eichelberger's
election to the bench.
He was Judge of that
District for more than twenty years. He was a man of talents, a well-read lawyer
and an able judge. His father and mother were elderly people when they came to
Ottumwa. I knew them well. They were well-bred and most excellent persons. Frank
had a brother, Thomas, familiarly known as "Tom" Eichelberger. He was
highly gifted, a brilliant writer and prominently connected with some of the
leading newspapers of the time. He died many years ago in the prime of life.
By
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