Alexander P. Crittenden

Alexander Parker Crittenden (January 14, 1816 – November 5, 1870) was a 19th-century pioneer American attorney and politician, and a member of the influential Crittenden family of Kentucky. Crittenden was killed by his mistress, Laura Fair, whilst sitting with the wife who he had sworn to leave.

Biography

Alexander Parker " A.P." Crittenden was born in 1816 to Thomas Turpin Crittenden and Mary Wilson Parker in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the nephew of John Jordan Crittenden and grandson of John Crittenden, Sr.. Parker graduated from West Point in 1836 at age 20. He had once been expelled for a prank but was reinstated by appealing directly to President Andrew Jackson. He joined the army as a Lieutenant of artillery, but quickly resigned his commission. After some employment as an engineer for railroad companies, in 1838 he married Clara Churchill Jones Crittenden (1820-1881). In 1839, the family moved to Brazoria County Texas where Crittenden practiced law and published the San Louis Advocate newspaper with his brother-in-law Tod Robinson. In 1849, seeking wealth, he trekked on horseback by way of Mexico and Arizona to Los Angeles, California. His traveling companions included James Audubon and Parker's brother-in-law, Dr. Alexander Jones. Jones suffered a knife wound in a fight in Tucson. In Los Angeles, nearly bereft of funds, Parker was elected to the first California legislature and was provided the means for the trip to San Jose. He chaired the judiciary committee in the 1st and 2nd state assemblies. He authored legislation to incorporate the City of Los Angeles. He introduced English Common Law into the California statutes. Clara, via Panama, with six children and 2 "servants" joined him in Santa Clara county in 1852.

He established his practice in San Francisco, Crittenden and Randolph. He was counsel in 26 California Supreme Court cases. He helped administer the William Walker (filibuster) conquest of Nicaragua in 1855. He spoke against the vigilantes, and kept his uncle in the U.S. Senate appraised of that activity. In 1861 he was elected chairman of the state Southern Democratic Central Committee, of Confederate sympathies. In 1863, with his brother-in-law attorney/politician Tod Robinson, he relocated to Virginia City, Nevada Territory after refusing to take the wartime oath of allegiance to the federal government. Clara remained in San Francisco and assisted the wife of Confederate Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston who had gone east for the war; falling in 1862 at Shiloh. The families had been connected in friendship and politics back in the Texas Republic.

The Crittenden family personified Lincoln's House Divided Speech during the American Civil War: Two of Parker's sons, Churchill and James Love, joined the Confederate States Army without their father's permission. Churchill Crittenden later was captured and executed as a spy. Cousin George Bibb Crittenden served the CSA as a general while his cousins Gen. Thomas L. Crittenden and Lt. Col. Thomas Theodore Crittenden remained loyal to the Union. His brother Thomas Turpin Crittenden, a veteran of the Mexican War, fought and won the first land battle of the Civil War at Philippi in western Virginia. Later he was captured by Gen. Nathan B. Forrest in the Battle of Stones River.

In Nevada Territory, Crittenden handled mining claims cases, and speculated in mining stocks. He lived in Virginia City and Aurora. He was defeated as the Esmerelda County representative to the Nevada state constitutional convention in 1863. In Virginia City he met and started a relationship with Laura Fair, the owner of the Tahoe House Hotel. Initially Fair believed him to be single, and when she discovered he was married, he promised to divorce Clara. In November 1870, as he sat next to Clara aboard the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco, Fair shot him in the heart.^[1][2] Her subsequent sensationalized trial, revealing the tawdry details of the prolonged affair exposed the family to great embarrassment. Fair was the first woman sentenced to hang in California, but was freed in a retrial.

Alexander Parker's letters are preserved by the University of Michigan, Clements Library. He traveled through historic times and places being an actor, keen observer and skilled writer.

References

Further Reading: Russell McDonald Collection, Box 13, Nevada State Historical Society, Reno H.H. Bancroft History of California, Vol VI, 1849 - 1850 Political History Alexander, Russell J., The Crittenden Correspondence, The Chronicle Vol 33, No. 1. The 1851 - 1861 period, The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol XLIII July 1839 - April 1840 The Texas State Historical Association, 1940 Pg.503