Weymouth Kirkland

Weymouth Kirkland (1877–1965) was a Chicago lawyer and one of the name partners of the Chicago law firm of Kirkland & Ellis.

Weymouth Kirkland was born in Fort Gratiot Township, Michigan on June 4, 1877, the son of James Kirkland and his wife Annie Weymouth Kirkland. His father's grandfather, also named James Kirkland, had fought at the Battle of Waterloo under the Duke of Wellington. Kirkland's paternal grandfather, Alexander Kirkland, was a Scottish architect and engineer who immigrated to the United States after graduating from the University of Glasgow; in 1879, Mayor of Chicago Carter Harrison, Sr. named Alexander Kirkland as Chicago's Commissioner of Public Works. Kirkland's father worked as superintendent of the shops of the Grand Trunk Railway in Port Huron, Michigan. Kirkland's mother's family had been in America since the seventeenth century, and his mother traced her ancestry back to William Bradford and John Alden.

Kirkland was raised in Fort Gratiot until he was fifteen years old, at which time he moved to Chicago and attended public schools. After school, he read law with prominent Chicago attorney Charles Hardy and then attended Chicago–Kent College of Law, graduating in 1901.

After he was admitted to the bar in 1901, Kirkland and Thomas Symmes formed a law partnership, Kirkland & Symmes. They landed a plum client, Chicago Union Traction and later its successor, the Chicago Railways Company. In his first decade in practice, Kirkland gained a reputation as a first-rate trial lawyer and represented other large companies, including the Lake Shore Electric Company, the Standard Accident Insurance Company, and Travelers Insurance Company.

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