Woodburn Masson

I love the information age. An excerpt from an e-book Google makes available has some information on my great, grand uncle, Woodburn Masson (brother of my great-grandfather), an Indianapolis attorney in the late 19th and early 20th centuries:

Woodburn Masson in his youth early became dependent upon his own resources. He had ambition, courage and persistence, and worked his own way in one of the most exacting of professions, defraying the expenses of his technical education and ever placing a true value upon men and affairs. It is thus pleasing to note that today he is numbered
among the representative members of the Indianapolis bar and is one of the highly esteemed citizens of his native citv.

Woodburn Masson was born in Indianapolis, on the 9th of July, 1869, and is a son of James P. and Eliza T. (Ross) Masson, the former of whom was born in Pennsylvania and the latter in Indiana.’ The father, who was a commercial traveler by vocation, died when his son, of this review, was an infant, and the widowed mother continued her residence in Indianapolis, where she reared her three sons and one dausrhter with all of self-abnegation and zealous devotion. She was summoned to the life eternal on the 15th of March, 1908, and her memory is revered
by all who came within the sphere of her gentle and gracious influence.

He whose name initiates this article continued his studies in the public schools of Indianapolis until he was fifteen years of age, when he found it incumbent upon him to assume practical responsibilities, as his mother had met with the loss of her savings and the returns from insurance policies held by her deceased husband, owing to the failure of the bank in which she deposited her funds. Under these conditions young Woodburn Masson devoted himself assiduously to learning stenography and typewriting, and to this line of work he devoted his attention nearly three years after becoming proficient in the same. He then began the study of law, in the office of the general attorney of the Lake Erie & Western Railroad. in Indianapolis, and later he completed a course in the Cincinnati Law School in the class of 1895. In 1891 he was admitted to the bar of his native city and state, where he has since continued in the active work of his chosen profession and where he has so utilized his fine natural and technical powers as to gain a position of prominence and a worthy reputation in his chosen vocation, to which his devotion and loyalty have been of the most insistent order.

From 1891 until 1894 he was assistant to the general attorney of the Lake Erie & Western Railroad, and since the expiration of that period he has devoted his attention to general practice in the State and Federal courts, in which he has won many decisive victories as a trial lawyer, while as a counselor he is known to be fortified with a broad and exact
knowledge of the law and to have marked facility in the application of such information.

The political views of Mr. Masson are indicated by the zealous service which he has rendered to the cause of the Democratic party, and as a citizen none could be more public-spirited or more zealous in the promotion of good government and needed reforms. In all measures and enterprises tending to make for good citizenship and civic and material progress, he lends a ready co-operation, and his interest in his native city is deep and abiding. He and his wife hold membership in the Meridian Street Methodist Episcopal Church.

In the year 1904, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Masson to Miss Nellie G. Wells, daughter of Dr. Merritt Wells, the oldest resident dentist of Indianapolis, and Mrs. Masson is popular in connection with the best social activities of her home city.

—Jacob Piatt Dunn, Greater Indianapolis, the Histories, the Industries, the Institutions at 781-782 (1910)