Histories

WM. LEMON CHITTY OF PIONEER FAMILY HERE DIES IN WEST – Was son of a Prominent Pioneer Metamora Attorney, Judge Chas. H. Chitty – Mrs. Eleanor Chitty Farrar of 1118 1/2 Pine Street, South Pasadena. Calif., sends the following communication to the Herald.

I believe the enclosed account of my uncle, William L. Chitty, may be of interest to some of your readers, though there cannot be very many who will remember the family.  My mother, Persis Chitty Stowell, was the eldest child of Judge and Mrs. Charles H. Chitty.  She is buried in the family lot in Oakwood Cemetery, Metamora with her parents and five brothers and sisters.

William Lemon Chitty, last remaining member of a pioneer Metamora family died June 23 in a sanitaruim in Palmdale, Calif., after a lingering illness.  He was the youngest child of Judge Charles H. Chitty and his wife, Rebecca Wing Lemon, and was born in Metamora March 10, 1866.

Mr. Chitty received his education in the Metamora schools, the University of Illinois and Harvard, then practiced law in Chicago prior to going to Washington where he was an attorney in the government service for some twenty years.  In 1924, being then in failing health and partially blind, he came to Los Angeles and continued practice until his increasing blindness forced him into retirement in 1942.  His only child, William Campbell Chitty, was killed in 1942, and his wife, Mary Helen Chitty, died Feb., 20, 1953.

Judge Charles H. Chitty’s days as a lawyer in Metamora go back to Lincoln’s time as a practicing lawyer in the old Metamora courthouse.  Judge Chitty’s law office was the study place of local law students aspiring for admittance to the Illinois bar.  Among those who finished their law course under him were later Judges Samuel S. Page and George T. Page, Wm. L. Ellwood and others.

Metamora Herald 3 July 1953 -(autoreverse originally shared this on 01 Jun 2010)