Elisha W. McKinstry

Elisha Williams McKinstry was a California jurist of the nineteenth century. He served as a justice of the California Supreme Court from 1874-1888.

McKinstry was born April 10, 1824 in Detroit, Michigan. In 1864 he married Annie Hedges. They had four children.

McKinstry came to California in 1849 on the steamship Panama.^[1] and was a member of the first state legislature. In 1851, he opened a law practice in Napa, and was elected in 1852 as judge of the Seventh Judicial District Court. In 1873 he was elected to the California Supreme Court, serving from 1874-1888. From 1888 to 1895, he was a professor of law at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.

Justice McKinstry died on November 1, 1901 in San Jose, California.^[2]

References

• Illustrated History of the University of California, William Carey Jones, 1901, p.321

2. The History of Contra Costa County, California, Frederick J. Hulaniski, Elms Publishing, 1917