ALEXANDER BURTON HAGNER
HAGNER, ALEXANDER BURTON, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, was appointed in 1879 and held the position until June 1, 1903. The bench of this court has been occupied by jurists some of whose decisions were the only authority on important questions which no other court except the Supreme Court of the United States has jurisdiction to decide. Born in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, July 13, 1826, he was the youngest but one of eleven children. His father was a trusted public officer for fifty-eight years, having been appointed a clerk during the administration of President Washington. He was a man of "unswerving integrity, marked industry and intelligence and devotion to duty." His mother, Frances Randall Hagner, was a woman of strong intellectual character and exerted an ennobling influence on her son. Both the paternal and the maternal grandfather of Justice Hagner served in the Revolutionary war.
Youthful games, sports and study, filled the years of his boyhood; and he early developed a taste for gardening and for mechanical work. This last mentioned bent was so strong that he writes: "On the bench I took pleasure in deciding patent office cases, involving nice questions about inventions."
He was sent to the best schools in Washington and Georgetown, and was graduated from Princeton college in 1845. He read law with his uncle, Alexander Randall, in Annapolis, Maryland, and formed a partnership with him in 1854, which continued until 1876, and after that date the firm name was continued though the partnership was with his cousin, J. Wirt Randall. Mr. Hagner was actively engaged in the duties of his profession in the Court of Appeals, circuit courts of Anne Arundel, Calvert, and other counties, in the courts of Baltimore, and before committees of the state legislature, from April, 1848, until January, 1879. During this time he was employed in numerous important cases involving novel and interesting questions, acting at times as judge advocate of courts-
