Fred H. Blume

Fred Heinrich Blume (; January 9, 1875 – September 26, 1971), or Fred H. Blume, as he referred to himself, was a German-born American attorney and judge. He served as a justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court for 42 years, from 1922 to 1963, and by himself translated from Latin into English the Codex Justinianus and the Novels (or Novellae Constitutiones), two parts of the Corpus Juris Civilis. Early life Friedrich Heinrich Blume was born in Winzlar, Germany. In 1887, at the age of 12, Blume immigrated by himself to the US. He joined his elder brother, Wilhelm, who had already immigrated to Elgin, Illinois. Five years later, Fred set off on his own, intending to work in Kansas as a farm hand. However, he fortuitously stopped in Audubon, Iowa, where a German-speaking attorney hired him as an office assistant and let him live in a back room of his office. After completing high school in Audubon, Blume enrolled at the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) in 1895. He graduated in 1898 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Career Blume was admitted to the practice of law in Iowa in 1899. In 1905, following several years practicing in Iowa, Blume moved with his wife to Sheridan, Wyoming, where J.L. Stotts had offered him a partnership in his law practice. Having already been a city attorney, he turned his focus to a legislative career, serving one term in the Wyoming House of Representatives (1907–09) and two terms in the Wyoming Senate (1909–13) as a Republican. A turning point in his life came in 1912 when he supported the progressive wing of the party--Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party. When the regular Republicans triumphed, Blume understood that his prospects in Wyoming politics would be limited. Years later Blume wrote about the day after the election: "I decided on that day that I would quit politics and spend the time which I had devoted to it to something else." Blume read extensively about the history of Western civilization. He became especially interested in Roman law and started building an extensive library that eventually would amount to approximately 2,300 volumes. In 1921, he was appointed to the Wyoming Supreme Court to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Charles E. Blydenburgh, on which he would serve until his retirement in 1963. He served as chief justice during three periods: 1927–31, 1937–39, and 1945–47. He also became a Mason.