Judge William Barclay Napton was born March 23, 1808, in Princeton, New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton College in 1826 with high honors. After his graduation, Napton received an invitation to work as a tutor in Charlottesville, Virginia. For the next six years, Napton worked as a tutor and conducted a preparatory school for the University of Virginia, all while studying law at the university.

 

In 1832, he left Virginia and moved to Howard County, Missouri, where he settled in Fayette, which at the time was an important political center in the state. His first position there was as editor of the Boonslick Gazette. Napton filled that post until he was elected secretary of the state senate in 1834. Two years later, then-Governor Lilburn Boggs appointed Napton attorney general. He held that position until his appointment to the Supreme Court of Missouri in April 1839, which filled the vacancy left by Judge John Cummins Edwards.

 

Napton’s term ended March 1, 1849, due to an amendment ratified January 11, 1849, which cleared the bench and limited judges’ judicial service to 12 years. He was reappointed to the Supreme Court of Missouri, after March 1, 1849, and served until 1851, when another constitutional amendment made judicial positions elective. Napton’s term concluded with the general election in August 1851.

 

Napton then returned to private practice until he later was elected to the Court. He was elected during the 1857 general election and served until December 1861, when he failed to take the new loyalty oath within the designated time required by the October 1861 ordinance passed during the state convention. 

In 1863, Napton moved to St. Louis and opened a law office. He returned again to the bench, when then-Governor Silas Woodson on June 24, 1863, appointed him to the Supreme Court of Missouri to fill the vacancy caused by Judge Ephriam Ewing’s sudden death. In 1873, Napton was elected to finish Ewing’s term. He completed the term, was reelected in 1874, and served on the bench until December 31, 1880. 

Judge William Barclay Napton died January 8, 1883. He was 75 years old.

 

“Appointments,” Columbia Statesman, Columbia, Missouri, July 4, 1873, page 2, column 6. Information courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri-Columbia Newspaper Database, available from the State Historical Society of Missouri website, accessed July 2017.

Kenneth H. Winn, ed., Missouri Law and the American Conscience: Historical 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, (Boston, MA: The Boston Book Company, 1891), 170.

Missouri Historical Review, No. 35, 1940-1941, 336. 

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, 472.

Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, Vol. LIII (St. Louis, MO: W.J. Gilbert, 1873), preface.

Walter Bickford Davis and Daniel Steele Durrie, An Illustrated History of Missouri, Comprising it’s Early Record and Civil, Political, and Military History from the First Exploration to the Present Time, (St. Louis, MO: A.J. Hall & Co.), 1876), 557.

“William B. Napton,” Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, Vol. 76 (St. Louis, MO: Gilbert Book Co., 1883), i-v.