Family Life and Legal Career
William E. Humphrey was born in Ripley Township, Indiana, in Montgomery County, to a farming family. According to the 1870 census, he was the middle of 3 children. His older sister, Edna, would remain close. His younger brother Oswald does not figure into the historical record. The 1880 census describes William as working on the family farm.
William attended nearby Wabash College in Crawfordsville, IN. Wabash College founded, in 1832, was, and remains, an all-male liberal arts college. At Wabash, he was active in debating and a member of the Lyceum Literary society. In 1887 he won a prize for an essay on "The African in America.” [Author note: this project may come to an end depending on the contents of this essay.] Humphrey remained connected to Wabash. He political rise was captured in the pages of “The Bachelor,” the student newspaper. He spoke to the student body in the run up to World War I. He attended a fundraising and alumni event in Washington, DC, in 1921 with other Wabash men in influential positions during Humphrey’s public life, including Democrat Thomas Marshall who served as Vice President during Woodrow Wilson’s two terms. Humphrey also left a contingent bequest to the school in his will.
After graduating from Wabash in 1887, at the age of 25, he practiced law in Crawfordsville. He moved to the growing city of Seattle, Washington, in either 1890 or 1893. A fellow Wabash graduate, John E. Humphries, said in 1902 that Humphrey learned law under his supervision in Crawfordsville before Humphries moved to Seattle. He also stated that he and Humphrey were law partners twice in Seattle.
Humphrey’s legal career in Seattle gained him notoriety, but it does not appear to have been particularly lucrative. In 1894, a William E. Humphrey sued a man named Gilbert F. Little for $165 in an “account” suit. This may be unpaid legal bills. William E. Humphrey was on the legal defense team of a man charged with murder of a mother and her baby. After the defendant fired his lead counsel fired Soderberg in favor of another attorney, Humphrey also withdraw from the case.
On January 2, 1895, the Star-Intelligencer reported that Esther Blate and members of the Zetler family were in court to answer charges of prostitution or living off the earnings of the women. The pages of the Post-Intelligencer portray the Zetler family as public menaces, thieves, prostitutes, and pimps who consistently beat charges brought against them. They were alleged to have operated cigar, candy, and fruit stores as “a blind for immoral purposes.” In the 1895 charges, all the defendants pleaded not guilty, but this time were convicted. Later in the month, defendant Rose Zetler raised post-judgment arguments to set aside the verdict and remand for new proceedings. The Post-Intellligencer reported that the judge “sustained a motion in arrest of judgment, whereupon a new complaint was filed and exception taken.” Meaning, the verdict was set aside and new charges were filed, which the defendant formally objected to in order to preserve a right to appeal. Proceedings continued throughout the year. On October 15, 1895, the Post-Intelligencer reported that “William E. Humphrey, who has been fighting the Zetler case ever since last December, had his hour of triumph yesterday afternoon, when Judge Osborn sustained the demurrer [motion to dismiss] to the complaint in one case, thus carrying the dismissal of all others with it.” According to the newspaper, “Humphrey claimed that the complaint was defective because it failed to state an offense, in leaving out the title and date of the passage of the ordinance claimed to have been violated.” While one judge did not agree with Humphrey’s position in a case against one defendant, “Mr. Humphrey went into details when the case of Rose Zetler came up before Judge Osborn and cited cases from other states to uphold his position.” After the judge dismissed charges against Rose Zetler, City Attorney Ellis De Bruler, who had inherited the cases from a previous city attorney, dismissed the cases against the other Zetler associates. This was a huge win for Humphrey which conceded with his rise in Republican political circles.