Horace Gray, ca. 1880
By C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell, Washington, D.C.
Albumen silver print, 11 x 6.5 cm
Cabinet Cards and Cartes de Visite, 1866 - circa 1900
HOLLIS 6883220
During Horace Gray’s (LL.B. 1849) 20 years on the Supreme Court, he hired nineteen Harvard Law School (HLS) graduates for a period of one or two years to serve as law clerks. Several of these clerks returned to become HLS faculty, including Samuel Williston (LL.B. 1888) (the first to do so), Joseph Warren (LL.B. 1900), and Erza Ripley Thayer (LL.B. 1891) - the first clerk to serve as HLS Dean. Gray’s half brother, John Chipman Gray (LL.B. 1861), who taught at the Law School from 1869 into the early twentieth century, would identify and recommend HLS students for clerkships during this period. Chipman Gray continued this tradition once Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. joined the Supreme Court.