George A. Jeffers Biography This biography appears on pages 332-333 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 GEORGE A. JEFFERS. Among the successful members of the bar of Rapid City is numbered George A. Jeffers, who was born in Jo Daviess county, Illinois, October 13, 1871, a son of Benjamin and Margaret (Ruble) Jeffers The father was a native of Wisconsin and a son of Alba Jeffers, who was one of the earliest pioneers of that state, having settled there in 1840, in which year he emigrated from Watertown, New York. Benjamin Jeffers was a contractor and builder and won an honorable place in the estimation of his fellowmen His widow, who is a native of Lewiston, Pennsylvania, survives, and is now resident of Phoenix. Arizona. To them were born four children, all of whom are living. George A. Jeffers, the second child in order of birth, was about a year old when the family removed to Iowa and as he grew to manhood there he was a witness of much of the early development of that state. His general education was acquired in the grammar and high schools of Akron, Iowa, and at the Northwestern Normal School of Le Mars, Iowa. As he had decided to make the practice of law his life work he entered the law school of the University of Michigan and was graduated therefrom with the class of 1892. In that year he located at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and for the succeeding three years was a resident of that place. He then returned to Akron, Iowa, and in 1898 was elected county attorney and removed to Le Mars, which remained his place of residence until 1902, when he returned to South Dakota and located at Bonesteel, where he spent five years, but in 1907 he went to Dallas. He lived in the Rosebud country until 1914, and in the intervening seven years was almost constantly employed in a professional capacity in connection with the department of the interior and federal courts in the handling of litigation that arose out of the opening up of the Indian reservation to white settlers. During that time he maintained offices both at Dallas and Washington, D. C., and the ability which he displayed in thus solving intricate legal tangles gained him a wide and enviable reputation as a lawyer. In 1914 he removed to Rapid City and joined Robert Burton in the formation of the firm of Jeffers & Burton, which has already taken rank as one of the leading legal firms of that city. He is the owner of valuable lands in the Rosebud country and is financially interested in the Black Hills Marble & Granite Company and the legal representative of that corporation. On the 30th of June, 1913, Mr. Jeffers was united in marriage with Miss Ethel Van Sant, a native of Westmoreland county, Virginia, and a descendant of one of the old colonial families of that state. Mr. Jeffers is a republican and takes a citizen's interest in everything pertaining to the public welfare, although he has never found time to actively participate in politics. His internal connections are with the Masons and the Elks, and he finds his chief recreation in hunting and fishing. The large measure of success that he has achieved is due to his fine mental powers and his thorough legal training and habit of making a careful study of both sides of any litigated subject and of so thoroughly preparing his cases that he is ready to take the offensive or defensive as the exigencies of the case may require. His zeal for his clients, interests never causes him to forget for a moment the highest standard of professional ethics and the demands of even-handed justice, and the bar and the general public alike have the greatest confidence in his integrity. His work in connection with the department of the interior in adjusting disputes that came up at the time of the settlement of the Rosebud reservation was of a particularly high order and many of his contentions were confirmed by the highest courts in the land.