Freestone County, Texas
Obituaries


Dallas Morning News
Apr 14, 1947
Page 1 & 4

[Photo of Judge B. H. Gardner]

Texas Jurist Passes Away

Judge B. H. Gardner 
Dies at Palestine

  The 92-year-old dean of East Texas lawyers, Judge Benjamin Howard Gardner, 
father of Mrs. Walter Dealey and Mrs. John W. Carpenter of Dallas, died early 
Sunday morning at his home in Palestine.
  His massive, white-manned head, soft voice and invariable black string tie were 
familiar to hundreds of Texas lawyers who appeared before him during his fifteen
years on the State Board of Legal Examiners. He was chairman of the board for 
thirteen years. 
  Judge Gardner has been confined to bed for ten days.  The heart attack that 
ended his life closed a seventy-year career in Texas law and politics.
  Funeral services will be held at 3 p.m. Monday in Palestine.
  Judge Gardner was perhaps best known for his service with the Board of Legal 
Examiners from 1924 until December 1938.  Associates believe he gave more Texas
lawyers their examinations than any other man.
  He had a long career as a jurist and lawyer behind him before he joined the
board.  He was born in Montgomery, Ala., June 10, 1854, the son of Benjamin 
Gardner, a captain in the Confederate army.
  He read law at night in the office of a brother, and was admitted to the bar 
in Troy, Ala., in 1875, the year he was twenty-one.
  The next year he moved to Fairfield, Freestone County, Texas.
  He was appointed county attorney there about 1880 and later was elected to the
office again.
  Judge Gardner has moved to Fairfield to locate on the route of the proposed 
Waco, Fairfield & Palestine Railroad.  In 1890, he joined W. L. Moody II in 
organizing a bank at Fairfield in expectation of a boom that would follow the 
railroad.
  The railroad didn't come to Fairfield, and a bank capitalized at $50,000 
turned out to be too large for the town.
  They closed the bank out.  Gardner took all uncashed notes at face value and, 
he said proudly in later years, never lost a cent.  Shortly afterward, he moved to 
Palestine.

Named District Judge
 
  In 1904, Judge Gardner was elected district judge for Henderson, Houston and
Anderson counties.  He held the office until 1912, when he decided not to run 
for re-election.
  During all these years, he took part in the work of the Democratic party 
organization.
  In 1878, he reported a county convention at Bryan where the greenback question
was a burning issue for the Galveston News and saw it develop into a split 
convention.  One of the last state conventions he attended, the 1944 meeting in
Dallas, also split.
  He spent much of his time in recent years writing his memoirs.  The book was 
privately printed recently and a copy is now in the University of Texas library 
at Austin.
  
Former School Trustee

  Judge Gardner was a former trustee of the Palestine schools.  He was a Mason
and a member of the Pine Lodge Club and Meadowbrook County Club of Palestine and
of the American, Texas and Anderson County bar associations.
  His wife, the former Miss Carrie Bonner, whom he married in 1881, died in 1929.  
Their only son, B. H. Gardner, Jr., was the first Anderson County man killed in 
the first World War, and the Palestine post of the American Legion is named for
him.
  Besides his two daughters in Dallas, Judge Gardner is survived by four other 
children, Mrs. Drew Kolstad and Mrs Will Kelelr of Palestine, Mrs. I. V. Duncan
of Eagle Lake, Colorado County, and Mrs. R. C. Sewell of Houston, nine 
grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.