Justice Robert Wesley McBride
(Thirty-ninth Justice)

Justice McBride was born January 25, 1842, in Richland County, Ohio, and he died May 15, 1926, in Indianapolis.

He attended school in Ohio and Iowa. He later taught school in Iowa, but in 1862 returned to Ohio and joined a cavalry company. He was a bodyguard to President Lincoln for about six months in 1863. In 1866, he moved to Waterloo, Indiana. In 1867, he was admitted to the Indiana bar after working as a clerk in the Indiana Senate.

In 1882, he was elected a circuit judge. In 1890, he was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Joseph Mitchell. He served from December 17, 1890 until January 2, 1893. Coincidentally, he had been defeated by Mitchell in the November 1890 election for the same Indiana Supreme Court seat. He practiced law in Indianapolis until his death.³⁹⁹

Source: Browning, Minde C., Richard Humphrey, and Bruce Kleinschmidt. "Biographical Sketches of Indiana Supreme Court Justices." Indiana Law Review: Vol. 30, No. 1, 1997. View this source in PDF format.