George W.F. McMechen

George W. F. McMechen was born October 29, 1871 to George and Mildred McMechen in Wheeling, West Virginia, an iron manufacturing town. He graduated in the first class of Morgan College (formerly the Centenary Biblical Institute), a historically Black college in Baltimore, in 1895 and subsequently received a degree from Yale Law School in 1897. McMechen practiced law for a few years in Evansville, Indiana, where he married Anna Lee and had his first two children, Mildred and Edythe. The family moved back to Baltimore in 1904 where they had two more children, Katherine and Georgeanna, and where McMechen established the law practice that he would share with W. Ashbie Hawkins until 1941.

McMechen’s life in Baltimore was marked with initial challenges; in 1910 he and his family was prevented from taking up residence on McCulloh Street due to opposition from the street’s white residents, and it was only upon petition to the Baltimore City Council and the Maryland Court of Appeals that he was ultimately able to move there in 1916. In 1915 he also lost an election to represent the 14th Ward on the Baltimore City Council. However, McMechen subsequently occupied a number of prestigious roles in the city, including Grand Exalted Ruler of Elks of the World (1919), trustee of his alma mater, Morgan College (1921-1939), Justice of the Peace in Baltimore’s 4th district (1937-1939), member of the Baltimore Board of School Commissioners (1944-1950), and member of the Advisory Committee to the Baltimore Charter Revision Committee.

George McMechen died on February 22, 1961, a little over five years after his wife, Anna.