John Hazelton Cotteral

John Hazelton Cotteral (September 26, 1864 – April 22, 1933) was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and previously was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. A native of Indiana, Cotteral attended the University of Michigan, where he studied law, then read law until 1885. He moved to Kansas, where he entered a private legal practice. He then met A. C. G. Bierer, and the two formed a partnership. In 1889, they joined the 1889 Land Run into what was then named as Oklahoma Territory, and settled in the city of Guthrie, which had been named the territorial capital. Their partnership dissolved when President Grover Cleveland appointed Bierer to the Oklahoma Territory Supreme Court Education and career Born on September 26, 1864, in Middletown, Indiana, Cotteral attended the University of Michigan and read law in 1885. He entered private practice in Garden City, Kansas from 1885 to 1889, during which time he met and formed a partnership with A.C.G. Bierer, a native of Pennsylvania who had received a master's degree in law from Georgetown Law School in 1886, then moved to Garden City. Together, they decided to join the 1889 Land Run in the newly-created Oklahoma Territory, which had just opened the Cherokee Strip for settlement by white settlers. Their business continued as private practice in Guthrie, Indian Territory (Oklahoma Territory from May 2, 1890, State of Oklahoma from November 16, 1907) starting in 1889.