AFFORDABLE HOUSTON JUVENILE DEFENSE ATTORNEYS

William A. Walker, Jr. It is a grateful duty to the biographer of individuals, who have fixed social influences for themselves in the vigorous life of Jeflferson County, to assign to its proper place one so admirably well rounded as that of Mr. Walker. He possesses the equipoise of intellectual faculties of a high grade, the grace of well-bred manner, and a handsome person to define the tout ensemble of an individuality which must be confessed to be superior to the general standard of manhood, even so respectable as that native to the region of his origin.

William A. Walker, the father, as we have seen, was one of the earlier settlers of Jones Valley. On his estate, in the vicinage of Elyton, his only son, William A. Walker, Jr., was born in 1846. There were six children to make happy a well-ordered home, maintained by prudence, wisdom, and prosperity. It was a home typical of the virtues, enjoyments, and aspirations of Southern society, under Southern institutions, of the period of its happy existence. The head, the father, was industrious, circumspect, and hospitable. The domestic regime moved under the auspices of frugal yet abundant measures, after their kind, presided over by his helpmeet. The children were taught in letters as the country permitted, and in manners and morals by the daily lives of those who had given them life.

William A. Walker, Jr., was sent to the neighborhood schools, the best nurseries of human nature, in the season of boyhood, which our educational methods have thus far devised. He slept under his father's roof, and spent his hours awake in continual contact with the tempers, intellects, courage, and idiosyncracies directed by the motives of boyhood. Directed by the motives of manhood, he now daily encounters the same human nature, and, thus early made familiar with its scope and meaning, has been able to take, in its affairs, a commanding position, commensurate with his natural instincts and high capacity.

William A. Walker, Jr., entered the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa in his sixteenth year. He was a student (or cadet, the institution being under military administration) and in the senior class, when, in September, 1863, he enlisted in a company formed from the University corps, and commanded by Captain C. P. Storrs, a fellow cadet, to join the Seventh Alabama Cavalry, Confederate States Army. He continued in the service until the final surrender and disbandment of the military forces of the Confederacy. He had been promoted sergeant, and had some unpleasant experiences as a prisoner of war in the period of active hostilities.

Returning to Elyton, young Walker entered at once upon work as a school teacher in the community of his friends and neighbors. After, perhaps, eight months service in this field, he entered upon the study of the law. In 1867 he was admitted to the bar. Entering at once upon the practice of his profession, he was so fortunate, as an example of the usual good fortune of his life, to be taken into co-partnership with Burwell Boykin Lewis, a gentleman of scholarly attainments, great energy, and of the highest moral character. Mr. Lewis became a leader of the new era. He was elected to Congress, and resigned to take the presidency of the State University, where he died in the prime of a highly useful and honorable career, regretted by the whole State.

Mr. Walker became the junior member of the law firm, Cobb, Lewis & Walker. The senior afterward served two terms as Governor of Alabama.

In 1870 he formed a copartnership with Hon. G. W. Hewitt, for eight years a member of Congress.

August 23, 1870, in his twenty-fourth year, Mr. Walker was happily married to Miss Virginia T., daughter of the late eminent jurist, W. S. Mudd, a near neighbor. They have six children, two daughters and four sons.

Mr, Walker held the responsible and laborious office of County Solicitor from 1868 to 1876, and distinguished himself as an honorable and .successful prosecutor.

He is a large stockholder and a director of the First National Bank of Birmingham. He was elected, in 1885, president of that prosperous institution, but after ten months service he discovered tlie irreconcilable nature of the office with his practice before the courts, and voluntarily resigned it.

The firm, Hewitt, Walker & Porter, commands a very large and profitable clientele. Corporation practice engages its labors largely. As a lawyer Mr. Walker is esteemed for the accuracy of his opinions and the absolute devotion he brings to his cause. His investigations of autliorities and his energy in pursuit of evidence to sustain his case are so marked by intelligence and natural aptitude to assimilate that which is of value to him that he seldom loses a client capable of appreciating these elements in a lawyer's mind. The oratory by which the law and evidence must be argued and explained to court and jury is earnest in manner and fluent in diction, dignified, as the speaker always is

William T. Underwood is one of the youngest of the iron-makers of the United states, and none are better known among those who sustain the new-born fame of Alabama in the great iron markets than he. The industrial civilization of our times is a moral and intellectual plane upon which strong men dispose great events. Leaders play their parts there as surely as in the eras of war, or discovery, or political reform. There are subjects to be moved upon that plane, under the most enlarged theories of offensive and defensive combination, regulated, withal, by the most advanced principles of social and political development. The widening influence of commerce; the refinement of thought, put in motion by the steam-driven machine ; the cultivation of personal honor, in the realm of banking ; the elevated manhood of labor are among the subjects, of which we speak, and whose disposition the modern business man is brought to contemplate and appreciate.

The personal elements of character which insure Mr. Underwood's high rank in his chosen sphere of life are the strictest integrity and directness of conduct, promptness and energy in methods, intelligence in opinions, ready accessibility and unvarying courtesy of intercourse. He is a business man, thoroughly identified with the life of the people among whom he lives.

W. T. Underwood was born in Nashville, Tenn., July 24, 1848. He is descended from an English colonist, who settled in Goocliland County, Virginia, as a planter toward the middle of the eighteenth century. Joseph R. Underwood, grandfather of William T., emigrated from Virginia to Kentucky in his youth. His name is honorably connected with the history of his adopted State He served as a soldier in the war of 1812. He represented one of the Kentucky districts in the lower house of Congress, and represented the State in the Senate. He was a lawyer of great distinction, and served as one of the judges of the court of appeals of that State.

The father, Eugene Underwood, is now a large farmer and land owner in Warren County, Kentucky. He was for several years a practicing lawyer at Nashville, Tenn. He was one of the originators of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, and one of its first directors.

William T. was carried to Louisville, Ky., by his father, after the death of his mother in Nashville, and there placed in the public schools. From these he was advanced to the Forest Academy, near the city. Having been well educated, Mr. Underwood read law, and was admitted to the bar, but never practiced the profession. He soon left Louisville to enter into land operations in Minnesota, and there became associated with influential men. His efforts in the West were altogether successful and satisfactory. In 1871 he took up his residence again in Louisville, but even then he continued to buy and sell the lands of Minnesota and other Western States and Territories, to examine titles and negotiate loans.

In 1882 Mr. Underwood was induced to come to Birmingham. He saw at once the marvelous opportunities here open to energy and capital well directed. He resolved to remain permanently, and then associated himself with Mr. H. F. De Bardeleben and others in founding the Mary Pratt Furnace Company.

Mr. Underwood has disposed of much of his possessions in other States to concentrate them at Birmingham. He is now a large investor in manufactories and real estate in and near the city. He is a director of the First National Bank, and president of the Mary Pratt Furnace Company, whose affairs he manages with distinguished capacity and success. He refused a nomination to the legislature at the August, 1886, election.

Mr. Underwood's mother, Catharine Underwood, nee Thompson, who died when he was ten years old, was a daughter of a lawyer of note, William Thompson, of Nashville.

In 1871 William T. Underwood and Miss Miranda B. Wilder, daughter of Oscar Wilder, a Louisville gentleman of wealth, were married. They lost their only child, a son, born to them in Birmingham. Mrs. Underwood is a very active promoter of the interests of the Episcopal Church, of which she is a member, and of practical charities of various kinds in the city. Mr. Underwood is a member of both the Masonic and Odd Fellow fraternities.

- from Jefferson County and Birmingham Alabama: History and Biographical, edited by John Witherspoon Dubose and published in 1887 by Teeple & Smith / Caldwell Printing Works, Birmingham, Alabama