Edward T. Sanford—Knoxville’s Justice

Abstract

Edward T. Sanford—Knoxville’s Justice JOHN M. SCHEB II Six Tennesseans have served on the U.S. Supreme Court,1 but only one—Edward T. Sanford—was from Knoxville. Sanford is also the only alumnus of the University of Tennessee to have ascended to the nation’s highest judicial office. As a Knoxvillian, a member of the University of Tennessee faculty, and a student of American constitu­ tional law and history, I have long been aware of Justice Sanford’s service on the Supreme Court. In 2015, the Historical Society of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District ofTennessee and the East Tennessee Histori­ cal Society held a symposium celebrating the life and career ofJustice Sanford. I was asked to talk about Justice Sanford’s background and judicial career and this short article is an adaptation of those remarks. Edward T. Sanford was born in Knox­ ville in the final year of the Civil War, 1865. Edward’s father, E.J. Sanford, had migrated from Connecticut in 1853 to seek his fortune in Knoxville. In 1864, he established E.J. Sanford and Company, a pharmacy business. In 1872, this firm merged with Chamberlain and Albers, which had been established by Knoxville businessmen Hiram Chamberlain and A.J. Albers, to form Sanford, Chamberlain and Albers. The new company would become one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the South. Eventually, E.J. Sanford’s business interests expanded into timber, mining, and banking. In the late 1860s, E.J. Sanford helped establish the Coal Creek Mining and Manufacturing Company, and in 1882, he helped organize the Mechan­ ics National Bank. It is fair to say that E.J. Sanford was a member of Knoxville’s business elite; one might even label him a tycoon. Edward’s mother, E.J. Sanford’s wife, was Emma Chavannes, the daughter of Swiss immigrants who settled in Fountain City, just north of Knoxville, and developed a success­ ful farming business there. E.J. Sanford and Emma Chavannes had eight children, two of EDWARD T. SANFORD OF KNOXVILLE 177 whom died as a result ofa cholera outbreak in 1864. Edward was the oldest of the other six children, being born a year after the cholera epidemic and a few months after the end of the Civil War. Young Edward proved to be an excellent student and, because opportunities for sec­ ondary education were so limited in Knox­ ville in those days, he enrolled at age fourteen in the Preparatory Department at East Tennessee University, which was renamed the University of Tennessee while he was a student there. In 1883, at age eighteen, Sanford graduated from the university with two degrees, a bachelor ofarts and a bachelor of philosophy. Sanford then went off to Harvard, where he earned three degrees— another baccalaureate, a master’s degree, and a law degree. Prior to law school, Sanford studied languages and economics in France and Germany for one year. He was among the very best law students at Harvard and served for a year as student editor of the newly founded Harvard Law Review. Sanford was admitted to the Tennessee Bar while still in law school, having been examined by Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Horace H. Lurton, another of the six Tennesseans who have served on the U.S. Supreme Court. The examination consisted of a discussion of a hypothetical case in which Justice Lurton apparently did most of the talking! Later, Lurton would remember that exam as “the severest examination any man ever went through . . .”2 Upon receiving his law degree in 1890, Sanford returned to Knoxville, where he established a law practice. It has been observed that, as “[a] Harvard graduate, Sanford was something of a unicorn, attracting a large number of persons to the Knox County Courthouse to observe him in action.”3 In 1891, Sanford married Lutie Mallory Woodruff, the daughter of Knoxville hard­ ware magnate W.W. Woodruff. They had two children: Dorothy (Metcalfe) in 1891 and Anna McGhee (Cameron) in 1892. In 1899, Sanford partnered with Knox­ ville lawyer James A. Fowler, who would run unsuccessfully for governor and U.S. Senator and who served a term as Knoxville’s mayor. As...