A typed reproduction of the portion of the article pertaining to William Nicholas Smelser. Created by William Lloyd Smelser, Grandson. Taken from:
The EMPORIA GAZETTE, February 15, 1954
Judge Smelser graduated from the old Emporia Business Collage in 1889.
For a time he worked for fifty cents a day for the Weaver Hardware
store,at the present location of the Hughes and Company jewelry store, and
then started studying law, and doing garnishment chores in the office of
Attorney Thomas N. Sedgwick. He took the bar examination before Judge
Charles B. Graves, and was admitted the same day, March 26, 1891.
A year in the law business was profitable enough for thrifty young
Smelser to save $500, and he headed for his native state of Michigan
and Ann Arbor where he enrolled in the law school at the University of
Michigan. He completed his junior and senior classes in one year, and graduated in
June 1893. Judge Smelser has attended six University of Michigan class
of 1893 reunions, and has never met a member of his graduating class. His
classwas termed to be the "pauper class," and included sixty young and
aspiringKansans.
Judge Smelser recalls that he went to Michigan with $500, and he had
only five cents remaining in his pocket, after railroad fare when he
arrived in Chicago on his trip home after graduation. He saved that
nickel until he arrived in Kansas City where near the old Union Depot he got a big
free lunch with a 5-cent glass of beer.
He opened a law office in 1893 in the old Emporia National Bank
building at Fifth and Commercial, and served a short tenure as police
judge. He was a member of the Emporia School Board when the old Maynard School
was built.
Judge Smelser's reward as an old line Republican came in April
1923. He was advised by U.S. Senator Charles Curtis to go to Kansas
City for an interview with James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor. Davis
took him to Washington to be the presiding judge of the Court of Immigration
and Naturalization.
Judge Smelser remained in Washington for ten years, serving under the
administrations of Presidents Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Franklin
D. Roosevelt. Thirteen days under the latter which the Judge enjoys
telling Republicans "was God's plenty."
Among his prized Washington service mementos are letters from
Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt, the first declining to accept
Smelser's resignation as assistant to the Secretary of Labor, and the other
Roosevelt's letter accepting his resignation of March 17, 1933.
Part of his work in the 1920's as judge of the Immigration Court, a
division of the Department of Labor, had to do with cases referred by
congressman called upon by constituents seeking to get relatives into
the United States. Concerning, Russians, Judge Smelser recall there
was no communistic or subversive issues of consequences in those day's, and
most of the business concerning Russia was personnel of a Russian
managed import company.
After the close of the Republican regime in Washington in 1933, Judge
Smelser returned to Emporia, and soon opened a law office in the
Ropfogle building where he has been for the last twenty years. He
still has a general law practice, making out legal papers, advising on wills, has
cases in both the probate and district court, defends clients in
police court, and currently is engaged in helping many Emporians in
preparing income tax returns.