Arthur L. Bates

biography

Arthur L. Bates, a prominent member of the Crawford county bar, resides at Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he was born in 1859. He is a son of Samuel P. Bates, LL. D., who has been prominent for many years as an educator, and who also contributed much of value to the history of the civil war by his Pennsylvania Volunteers, History of the Battles of Gettysburg, Chancellorsyille, etc.

The subject of this sketch was fitted for a collegiate course under tutors, and graduated at Allegheny College in 1880, and, although the youngest of a large class was its valedictorian. The next two years were spent as a student-at-law in the office of Hon. Joshua Douglass, where by close application and study he was prepared for admission to the bar in September, 1882, when he took the oath as attorney and counselor-at-law, and at once opened an office in the Derickson building on Chestnut street, and has ever since been in active practice in Crawford and adjoining counties. In 1884 Mr. Bates spent part of the year abroad, and was for a time at Oxford University.

He has always taken an active interest in politics and in all questions touching good government, the elevation of citizenship and a high standard of political morals. Since the fall of 1880, his voice has been heard in every political campaign in Crawford county in behalf of the Republican party, of which he has always been a constant adherent and advocate. He was for some years president of the Young Men’s Republican Club of Meadville, and afterward led in the organization, and was the first president, of the well known Columbia Club, having a membership of some three hundred prominent Republicans of the county, and for many years the only permanent political club in Crawford county. He is also a member of the Americus Club of Pittsburg, of the Meadville Literary Union, and of the Round Table, treasurer of the Crawford County Bar Association and a director in the First National Bank. He has been for many years a member of Crawford Lodge, I. 0. 0. F., and is a Past Master by service of Crawford Lodge, F. & A. M. He is a member of the National Society of Sons of the American Revolution, being descended from patriotic colonial ancestry.

In 1888 he was elected by the votes of the twenty-sixth Pennsylvania district an alternate delegate to the Republican national convention at Chicago. In 1889 he was elected vice-president for Pennsylvania of the National Republican League. Mr. Bates has served four terms as city solicitor of Meadville having been first elected in 1889, and re-elected in 1890, 1892 and 1894. While serving in this capacity he was associated with some of the best lawyers in the state in the trial of the celebrated case between the City of Meadville and the Meadville Water Company, having hearings before the United States circuit court at different points, and finally before the Pennsylvania supreme court at Harrisburg and Philadelphia.

Mr. Bates was the choice of Crawford county by an overwhelming vote for the Republican nomination for congress in 1898, but did not receive the district nomination. He is at present a member of the Republican state committee for Crawford county.

His legal and political duties have not deterred him from indulging a natural fondness for farm and agricultural pursuits, and he has for many years owned and operated a large farm in Randolph township, known as Hillsdale, where he raises abundant crops and also fine specimens of stock.

Our county and its people: a historical and memorial record of Crawford County, Pennsylvania by Samuel P. Bates, 1899, pages 684-685.