Judge Ephraim Brevard Ewing was born in May 1819 in Todd County, Kentucky. Soon after his birth, his family left Kentucky and moved to Missouri. In 1820, they moved to Boonville, in Cooper County. The family finally settled in Lafayette County in 1831. Ewing was educated at Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, and studied law in the office of Judge Buckner, a well-known lawyer in Kentucky at the time, upon the completion of his studies at Cumberland College. Following his studies with Judge Buckner, Ewing moved to Richmond, Missouri, in Ray County, Missouri, and completed his studies as an apprentice to his brother, Robert.

 

Ewing was admitted to the bar in 1842 and opened a practice with his brother in Ray County. In the winter of 1846 to 1847, Ewing was appointed as the secretary of the state senate. In 1849, he was appointed as secretary of state by Governor Austin King. In 1857, Ewing was appointed to the position of attorney general. He resigned in August 1859, when he was elected to the Supreme Court of Missouri, following the resignation of Judge John C. Richardson. 

In 1861, the bench of the Supreme Court of Missouri was vacated after the passage of an ordinance, adopted at the state convention, with regard to the filing of a loyalty oath giving officials 60 days to sign and file the loyalty oath. When this period ended in December 1861, Ewing’s office as judge was declared vacated, and he returned to private practice in Jefferson City In November 1872, he again was elected to the Supreme Court of Missouri for a term beginning January 1, 1873.

In 1864, he moved to St. Louis. In 1870, after practicing in the area for several years, he was elected as a circuit judge of the St. Louis circuit court. He resigned from that court in 1872 and was reelected to the Supreme Court of Missouri. Judge Ewing’s second tenure at the Court was cut short, however, when he became ill.

He died June 21, 1873, a few months after resuming his seat on the bench. He was 54 years old.

Charleston Courier, Friday July 29, 1859, page 3 column 1. Information courtesy the State Historical Society of Missouri-Columbia Newspaper Database, accessed July 2017.

Horace W. Fuller, ed., Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri, 173, 180. 

“Judge Ewing. Action of the Bar on His Decease. Tributes of Respects,” The Missouri Republican, (St. Louis, Missouri), June 24, 1873, information courtesy of the SHSMO Digital Newspaper Project, available from the State Historical Society of Missouri website, accessed October 29, 2021.

Kenneth H. Winn, Missouri Law and the American Conscience: Historic Rights & Wrongs (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2016), 91.

L.C. Krauthoff, “The Supreme Court of Missouri,” Horace W. Fuller, ed., The Green Bag, Vol. III, (Boston, MA: Boston Book Co., 1891), 180.

Ordinances Passed at the Various Sessions of the Missouri State Convention, 1861 & 1862, (St. Louis, MO: George Knapp & Co., Printers and Binders, 1862), 6, information digitized by and available on Hathitrust.org website, accessed October 29, 2021.

Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, Vol. XXXI (St. Louis, MO: George Knapp & Co., 1862), preface, 473.

William Van Ness Bay, “Ephraim B. Ewing,” Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri, (St. Louis, MO: F.H. Thomas and Company, 1878), 172-173.