Robert H. Jackson - Early Life

Early Life

Born on a family farm in Spring Creek Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania and raised in Frewsburg, New York, Jackson graduated from Frewsburg High School in 1909 and spent the next year as a post-graduate student attending Jamestown High School in Jamestown, New York. Jackson did not attend college.

At age 18, he went to work as an apprentice in a two-lawyer Jamestown law office, then attended Albany Law School, in Albany, New York during 1911-12. Although Jackson completed the second year of the School's two-year program, it denied him a law degree because he was under age twenty-one.

During the summer of 1912, Jackson returned to Jamestown. He apprenticed again for the next year. He passed the New York bar examination in 1913 and joined a law practice in Jamestown, New York.

In 1916, he married Irene Alice Gerhardt in Albany. In 1917, Jackson was recruited to practice law in Buffalo, New York. He worked for Penney, Killeen & Nye, a leading Buffalo law firm located in the Ellicott Square building, primarily defending the International Railway Company in trials and appeals. In Buffalo, the Jacksons lived at 49 Johnson Park (the Lyndhaven apartment building). In late 1918, Jackson was recruited back to Jamestown to serve as the city's corporation counsel.

Over the next 15 years, he built a very successful private law practice, becoming a leading lawyer in New York State and, through practice and bar association activities, a prominent young lawyer nationally. In 1930, Jackson was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. In 1933, Jackson was elected chairman of the American Bar Association's Conference of Bar Association Delegates (a predecessor to today's ABA House of Delegates).

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