This month’s Bar Bulletin theme “1886 to Now” is a tribute to the KCBA’s history, and the individuals who built the bar into such a vibrant organization.
Usually our profiles feature a King County attorney, judge or community partner who has contributed to the local legal profession and community. Instead of profiling one individual this month, we are taking you through time to meet a few of KCBA’s leaders, beginning with John McGilvra, KCBA’s first President, and ending with Erin Overby who will begin her service as President in July. Every leader has helped to formulate and exemplify KCBA’s mission over the years in their own unique and inspiring way.
John J. McGilvra – KCBA’s First President
John J. McGilvra was born on July 11, 1827, in Livingston County, New York and was raised there until 1844. He and his family then moved to Illinois, where he taught school for several years, before being admitted to the Illinois bar in 1853.
In 1861, 25 years before the formation of the King County Bar Association, John McGilvra arrived in Washington from Chicago after being appointed by President Lincoln to serve as the U.S. attorney for the Washington Territory. McGilvra held the position until 1865 and during that time he fought at least two losing battles. First, he tried to halt the wholesale logging of timber on government lands, logging that made many company owners millionaires at, what McGilvra considered, the expense of the government. Second, he tried to get the United States government and its army to enforce treaties to keep invading miners and others off lands that had been reserved for the native people.1
After completing his 4-year term as U.S. attorney, McGilvra moved to Seattle where he opened a private practice. He was elected to the territorial legislature in 1866 as a Republican where he lobbied on behalf of the Washington territory against federal land grants to the railroad which were preventing settlers from accessing land. His most notable accomplishment during his single term in the legislature was enabling the passage of legislation for a wagon road over Snoqualmie Pass, creating the first trans-Cascade connection between eastern and western Washington.2
In 1876, John McGilvra was appointed as the second Seattle City Attorney where his biggest case for the city involved a 320-acre parcel of land known as the Maynard Donation, which sat at the heart of what is now downtown Seattle. On appeal, the Secretary of the Interior ruled that no person could obtain a title to the eastern half of the donation that lay within city limits. While not an unequivocal victory for the city, this prevented Northern Pacific or a conglomeration of private landowners from securing exclusive title to valuable real estate, and ensured that the Maynard Donation would remain free for development by multiple groups, including the city.3
McGilvra entered into seven partnerships during his legal career and from 1885 until the end of his active career in the law, he practiced with Elbert F. Blaine where his practice focused on estate cases, bill collections, drafting wills and contracts, and handling small civil cases. By 1886, the firm of McGilvra & Blaine had begun having documents prepared on a typewriter versus long hand, and by 1889 the firm had purchased a “Yost Writing Machine” for $97.50 from a San Francisco supplier. McGilvra was an avid reader of poetry, and it is said that that he had pictures of poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier hung on his office walls.4
Prior to 1884, no formal bar association existed although John McGilvra often chaired informal meetings of Seattle lawyers. In 1884, Seattle lawyers Orange Jacobs, Roger Sherman Greene, I.M. Hall, C.H. Hanford, W.H. White, and McGilvra were appointed to formulate plans for a bar association. It wasn’t until 1886, after the anti-Chinese riots that the King County Bar Association was formally organized. The founding twenty-four members drafted a constitution and bylaws, along the lines suggested by the informal committee off 1884 and John J. McGilvra was elected as the first President of the King County Bar Association,5 an office he held until 1889.
Charles Horowitz – KCBA’s Fifty-Fifth President
Our 55th President, Charles Horowitz was a longtime bar activist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, his family moved to Seattle in 1913. Horowitz attended public schools, sold newspapers and delivered magazines after school, and sold candy at movie theaters in the evening. During the summer he mowed lawns and worked at fruit stands, saving his earnings to allow him, at age 17, to attend University of Washington and then later to attend the university’s School of Law.6
Horowitz graduated summa cum laude in 1927, served as President of the editorial board for the Washington Law Review, and was awarded a three-year Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University where he earned a B.A. degree in jurisprudence in two years. Upon his return to Seattle, he joined Preston, Thorgrimson & Turner and in the 1950’s became active in the Seattle Bar Association (as the Bar was known at that time).
In 1957, Horowitz was elected president of the Seattle Bar Association. In the very first meeting he presided over he proposed a massive reorganization of the Bar’s committees and the addition of eighteen practice sections, which the Board approved.
During Horowitz’s term as president, he was enthusiastic about the formation of a section for young lawyers and recruited William Wesselhoeft to chair the section and provide practical skills training and other assistance to new lawyers. At Horowitz’s last SBA meeting as president on June 4, 1958, the board approved amending its articles of incorporation to change the organization’s name from the Seattle Bar Association to the Seattle-King County Bar Association (SKCBA).7
When Washington voters approved a constitutional amendment to create an intermediate court of appeals in Washington, Charles Horowitz was one of the twelve judges appointed by Governor Dan Evans to the newly formed bench. Horowitz was elected to the Washington Supreme Court in 1974 where he served until his retirement in 1980.
Betty B. Fletcher – KCBA’s Seventieth President
In 1972, Betty B. Fletcher became the first woman president of the Seattle-King County Bar Association. It was not the first time she had been first. She had been the first editor of the Seattle Bar Bulletin, first in her class at the University of Washington law school, the first woman to become a partner with the firm Preston Thorgrimson,8 and the first woman governor of the Washington State Bar Association.
Betty Binns Fletcher was born in Tacoma in 1923. The daughter of an attorney, the law was her career choice from a young age and her father occasionally allowed her to skip school to watch him try cases. She graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1942 and began her legal studies at Stanford Law School where she completed one year before marrying Robert L. Fletcher, who was soon assigned to flying anti-aircraft blimps out of Lakehurst, New Jersey. After the war, the family relocated back to Lakewood where Fletcher completed her studies and graduated from the University of Washington School of Law in 1956, while raising four children. Despite graduating top in her class, Fletcher had difficulty finding a job in the male dominated legal community until finally, Charles Horowitz, of Preston Thorgrimson and past-SKCBA president, took a chance and hired her.
During her time as president of the SKCBA, Fletcher created a long-range planning committee, outlined the Bar’s move from the Arctic Building to new offices in the Central Building, and continued its support for legal services and the lawyer referral service.9 In 1979, Fletcher would go on to be appointed by President Jimmy Carter to a new seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where she continued to serve until her death in 2012.
The Presidents in Between
I have had the honor of working for KCBA since October 2006 and at that time John Ruhl, KCBA’s 104th President was in office, and he helped introduce me to the legal community and the profession. Over the years, I have had the pleasure of working with 18 different presidents and each one exemplified the mission of KCBA in their own unique and outstanding way. As we move into July and Karen Orehoski finishes her term as president, she will pass her gavel to Erin Overbey who will continue to lead this organization into the future.
Erin Overbey – KCBA’s One Hundred Twenty Second President
A 1986 graduate of Oregon State University, Erin earned her Juris Doctorate with Honors from Lewis and Clark Law School in 1992 before relocating to Seattle. Erin began her legal career in private practice at the firm of Williams and Williams representing a wide variety of clients including numerous Special Purpose Districts. This gave Erin a solid foundation in a wide spectrum of legal issues, including labor and employment law. A few years after beginning to concentrate her efforts on labor and employment issues, Erin joined the Seattle City Attorney’s Office in the Employment Division in 2001, handling a variety of cases, including everything from sexual orientation discrimination to whistle blower claims. After working her way up to Senior Assistant Attorney, in 2013, Erin made the career move to the King County Prosecutor’s Office, where she was eventually selected as General Counsel by the King County Sheriff.10
In Erin’s early days of practice, most of her volunteer work centered around her children but now KCBA has been the beneficiary of her volunteerism. After serving a three-year term as a trustee, Erin has served as second and first Vice President and in July she will become the Bar’s 122nd President.
I look forward to working with Erin this next year and would highly recommend you learn more about Erin by reading her full profile in the November 2022 issue of the Bar Bulletin that can be found online https://www.kcba.org/?pg=BarBulletinOnline.
Kathleen Jensen is KCBA’s Associate Executive Director. She can be reached by email at (kathleenj@kcba.org) or phone (206.267.7053).
1 From Profanity Hill; King County Bar Association’s Story by Marc Lamson, page 15
2 https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv74223
3 https://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/seattle-facts/city-officials/corporation-counsel/city-attorney
4 From Profanity Hill page 19
5 From Profanity Hill page 23
6 From Profanity Hill page 74
7 From Profanity Hill page 74
8 From Profanity Hill page 88
9 From Profanity Hill page 89
10 Bar Bulletin, November 2022 page 6
