Joseph Mitchell Donovan Biography This biography appears on pages 418-419 in "History of Dakota Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. IV (1915) and was scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net. This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the SDGENWEB Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://usgwarchives.org/sd/sdfiles.htm JOSEPH MITCHELL DONOVAN. Joseph Mitchell Donovan, a prominent member of the bar of Sioux Falls who carefully prepared for his profession and has ever been painstaking and thorough in the preparation of his cases since entering upon active practice, was admitted to the bar in 1889. He was born in Littleton, New Hampshire, April 28, 1866, a son of Peter and Julia (Mitchell) Donovan. The father was a native of London, England, and eame to America alone when a youth of eighteen years. He located first at Plymouth, New Hampshire, and afterward removed to Littleton, that state. It was in the schools of Littleton that Joseph M. Donovan pursued his education until graduated from the high school with the class of 1884. He pursued his more specifically literary course in the Georgetown (D. C.) University and was graduated in 1887. He then entered the law department of the same institution and completed a three years' course in two years, thus becoming an alumnus of the class of 1889. In November of the same year he sought the opportunities of the west, making his way to Sioux Falls, where he has since remained. Here he opened an office and has now been engaged in practice for about a quarter of a century. He carefully prepares his eases, is strong in argument and logical in his deductions, so that his position always carries weight with court and jury and seldom fails to convince. He has proven himself able to cross swords in forensic combat with South Dakota's most eminent lawyers and he is an authority on the phase of jurisprudence to which he has given the most careful study. During the last twenty years he has specialized in interstate and private international law, and is now recognized as an international expert in the law of domestic relations, his books and writings on marriage and divorce, particularly on the question of jurisdiction to pronounce an internationally valid divorce judgment, having been cited and approved by many of the courts of last resort of the United States and other countries in their decisions on this subject. His law library is equipped with the complete statute law of all parts of the United States and of many of the other countries of the world, and his whole time is now devoted to the prosecution or defense, in the different parts of the United States, of actions involving the question of jurisdiction to decree an internationally valid divorce judgment. On the 14th of April, 1889, at Washington, D. C., Mr. Donovan was united in marriage to Miss Tillie Martin, a daughter of Hiram and Tillie (Peters) Martin, of Ripley, Ohio, and the children of this union are Vivien, Clewell, Wanda, Helen and John Honore. The religious faith of the family is that of the Catholic church and Mr. Donovan belongs also to the Modern Woodmen of America and to the Knights of Pythias lodge, having held all of the offices in the local organization of the latter. For six years he was a member of Company F, Third Regiment New Hampshire National Gard, at Littleton. In politics he is a democrat with independent tendencies, voting rather as his judgment sanctions than as his party dictates. He has made a creditable place for himself in social and professional circles of Sioux Falls since coming to this city and is one of its most highly respected residents.