Alphius Lamont L. Hamilton, one of the leading attorneys of Eldorado, is the Nestor of the Butler county bar and one of the foremost legal practitioners in the State of Kansas. Mr. Hamilton was born in Harrisville, Butler county, Pennsylvania, March 4, 1850, and is a son of William and Catharine (Logan) Hamilton. The Hamilton family has been prominent in America since Colonial times. The great, great-grandfather of judge Hamilton was James Hamilton, who came to Newton township, Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, with the Scotch-Irish migration of the first half of the Eighteenth Century. James Hamilton married Peggy Laughlin and died in 1777, leaving three sons, all of whom served in the Pennsylvania militia during the Revolutionary war. His youngest son, Hugh, born near Carlisle, Pa., married Martha Moorhead, and settled in Westmoreland county about the end of the Eighteenth century. Among Hugh's sons was William Hamilton, Judge Hamilton's grandfather, who served in the war of 1812 and later became prominent in the state militia, rising to a brigadier-generalship. The wife of General Hamilton was Sarah Stewart. William Hamilton, the second son of Gen. William Hamilton, was born in Mercer county, Pennsylvania, Sept. 3, 1818, and married Catharine Logan. During the Civil war he served in the Third Pennsylvania heavy artillery, which performed a large amount of duty at the front, both by land and sea. After the war he removed to Floris, Davis county, Iowa, where he resumed his occupation of building contractor. One of the four children that accompanied the family to Iowa, in 1866, was A. L. L. Hamilton of this review. Judge Hamilton's grandfather on the maternal side, Robert Logan, also served in the Union army as a member of the famuos[sic] "roundhead" regiment, officially known as the One Hundredth regiment, Pennsylvania infantry. He entered the service at the advanced age of sixty-four and died from exposure at Newport News, Va., before his three years' service was over. The maternal great-grandmother of Judge Hamilton—Massie Dillon—when a girl of twelve years was captured, scalped and left for dead by the Indians in a raid at Phillipsburg, N. J., both of her parents being killed at the same time. She was afterward found by white settlers and finally recovered. Her father, Isaac Dillon, of New Jersey, was a soldier in the Continental army in the war of the Revolution.

Judge Hamilton secured his preparatory education in the public schools and Harrisville Academy in his native county, and at Iowa City, Iowa. He read law with Gen. James B. Weaver—who was a candidate for President of the United States in 1880 and again in 1892—at Bloomfield, Iowa, and later with Judge Williams, at Ottumwa, Iowa. Being thus prepared he entered the law department of the University of Iowa, in which he completed the prescribed course and graduated as a member of the class of 1871 being admitted to the bar in June of the same year at Des Moines, Iowa. He forthwith began the practice of his profession, removing to Emporia, Kan., July 12, 1871, at which place he began the practice of law with Ed. S. Waterbury as an associate. In the following April he located at Eldorado, Butler county, where he has ever since continued his work, devoting his attention to the general lines of practice. In 1886 he formed a partnership with J. K. Cubbison and this association continued until 1890, when the firm of Clogston, Hamilton, Fuller & Cubbison was organized, with offices in Eldorado, Eureka and Kansas City. In 1892 this firm was dissolved, and Mr. Hamilton later formed a partnership with Bruce R. Leydig, under the firm name of Hamilton & Leydig, which association still continues. Politically Mr. Hamilton is a Republican, influential in the councils of his party and strong in the advocacy of its cause. He was elected county attorney of Butler county and served during the years 1877-78. In 1887 he was elected judge of the Twenty-sixth Judicial District, but resigned the position after about one year's service, preferring the active practice of his profession to the bench. He is very successful in his practice, a large part of which is in the United States courts, and he is the attorney for the Citizens' State Bank of Eldorado and also for the Missouri Pacific railway and other leading corporations. He is a member of both the Kansas State and the American bar associations.

On Aug. 12, 1873, Judge Hamilton was married to Jennie, daughter of Joseph Carr, of Augusta, Kan., and who was a pioneer of Butler county, living to the advanced age of ninety-six and having cast his first presidential vote for Henry Clay, in 1832. Of this union there have been born the following children: Dillon, a prominent dental surgeon of Eldorado; Homer, a graduate of the Kansas City College of Law in the class of 1899, and who is practicing his profession in Kansas City, Mo.; and Hugh, a graduate of the Kansas City Dental College and a resident of Kansas City, Mo. The family are among the leading citizens of Butler county.