Montgomery-Lauderdale County AlArchives Biographies.....Walker, Richard Wilde, Jr. March 11, 1857 - April 10, 1936
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Carolyn Golowka http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00012.html#0002972 June 16, 2006, 2:41 pm

Author: “Memorial Record of Alabama,” Volume 2, published by Brant & Fuller in Madison, WI (1893), pages 765-766

Judge Richard Wilde Walker [Jr.], now the junior member of the Alabama supreme 
court, was born in Florence [Lauderdale County], Ala., on March 11th 1857.  His 
father, Judge Richard Wilde Walker, whose name he bears, was a learned and 
distinguished judge of the same court for many years, resigning the position to 
accept that of senator in the Confederate States government in 1863.  His 
uncle, Gen. Leroy Pope Walker, was a noted lawyer and a great advocate, being 
generally known as the first secretary of war for the Confederate government.  
Another uncle, the Hon. Percy Walker, was also a lawyer and politician of 
renown and prominence in Alabama.  Young Walker attended Washington and Lee 
college, Lexington, Va., one year, and afterward went to Princeton college, New 
Jersey, where he achieved scholarly distinction, graduating with the class of 
1877.  His father and paternal grandfather had each graduated in the same 
institution, way back in the past generation.  After attending the Columbia Law 
school in New York city, one session, he was admitted to the bar at Huntsville, 
Ala., in the fall of 1877, which had been the chief theater of his father’s and 
uncle’s greatest forensic triumphs.  He practiced law in St. Louis, Mo., for 
about one year; went to New Mexico, but remained on two or three months, and in 
1881 went to New York city, where he engaged in the practice of his profession 
for more than two years.  Mr. Walker in these three years was engaged in 
storing his mind with a wealth of knowledge.  With his great industry and power 
of legal discrimination, he laid the sure foundation of a predestined success.  
Not being impressed with a fondness for life in so large a city as New York, 
where his modesty of manners , probably, contributed to conceal his merit so as 
to prevent his success from keeping pace with his ambition, he left New York 
and returned to Huntsville, Ala., early in 1884.  Here he devoted himself 
assiduously to the practice of law, each year adding to his growing reputation, 
until his success was so complete that he was retained as counsel on one side 
of nearly every important litigated case.  His arguments before the supreme 
court were models worthy of imitation.  Pleasant and persuasive in address, 
earnest in manner, thoroughly conversant with the law and the facts of his 
case, and logical in his presentation of them, he always commanded the 
attention of the judges.  They felt, when he had finished talking, that a flood 
of light had been turned into every dark corner of an often voluminous and 
uninviting record.  On February 23, 1891, he was appointed by the governor to 
the office of associate justice of the supreme court of Alabama, being then not 
quite thirty-four years of age.  He is probably as young a judge as occupies 
such a position in any of the forty-four states of the Union.  The present 
chief justice of the same court, the Hon. G. W. Stone, was an associate justice 
of the same court the year Judge Walker was born, and the present supreme court 
reporter also occupied the position of reporter at the same time – in 1857.  
The father of Judge Walker was on the bench at the same time with Judge Stone.  
This mantle of Elijah thus gracefully falls upon the young Elijah, who bids 
fair to prove as mighty a prophet as his illustrious predecessor.

Additional Comments:
Richard's mother was Mary Ann Simpson.  He married Shelby White in Huntsville, 
Madison County, Alabama on June 22, 1886.  They had no children.  Richard was 
appointed to the United States Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit.  He reached 
senior status in 1930 and remained with the court until his death in 1936.

Shelby was born January 14, 1862 and died March 12, 1948.  Both Richard and 
Shelby are buried in the Maple Hill Cemetery, Huntsville, Madison County, 
Alabama

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