Michigan has contributed its full share toward the intellectual progress of the new west. As many Michigan men are to be found in places of trust and responsibility, in the learned professions and in the higher circles of business, in the Rockies and beyond them, as men from any state in the Union. Lyttleton Price, who is part owner and manager of the Red Cloud and Solace groups of mines, is a prominent Idaho lawyer and politician, a resident of Hailey and a native of Macomb County, Michigan. He was born twenty miles northeast of Detroit, May 4, 1848, a son of David and Elvira (Momford) Price. In both lines of descent he is of English blood. Both families turned out heroes in the Revolutionary war. One of these was Captain Peter Price. Another was Captain Simons, the maternal grandfather of Mr. Price’s mother. Both were from Maryland, and the records of their valor are to be found among the archives of that state. Mr. Price’s grandfathers both lived in Rush, New York, twenty miles from the city of Rochester, and there his parents were born and were married. His father was a merchant, farmer and miller, a man of extensive enterprises for his time and generation. In religion he was a Universalist; his wife was a Methodist. They removed to Michigan in 1835 and were among the pioneers in their part of the state. Mrs. Price died in 1881, aged seventy-one years. Mr. Price is still living at the old family home in Michigan, now eighty-nine years old. They had two daughters, and a son whose successful career will now be considered somewhat at length.
Lyttleton Price was educated in the public schools near his boyhood home and at Ypsilanti Seminary. While still quite young he went to San Francisco, California, this being in the year 1869. He entered upon the study of law, and was admitted to the bar in 1872. He practiced in California four years, with growing success, and then went to Arizona, where he was United States attorney under General John C. Fremont, who was governor of that territory 1880-83. When he gave up that responsible office, which had been by no means insignificant in its demands upon his resources, and the duties and requirements of which he had met with the greatest satisfaction to the judiciary of the territory, he came to Hailey, where he has since practiced his profession and given attention to his mining interests. As a lawyer he has taken high rank in Idaho and has built up a practice which extends into nearby states.
He is influential in the councils of the Republican party and for the past three years has been one of the most prominent silver Republicans in Idaho. He was a delegate to the St. Louis convention of 1896 and was one of the delegates who walked out because of the attitude assumed by the controllers of the convention toward the silver question. Since then he has never retreated from the stand then taken, and he has frequently been chosen chairman of the state conventions of politicians of his way of thinking.
Mr. Price was first married in 1875. By that marriage he has a son, Lyttleton Price, Jr. twenty-one years of age, and now attending the Golden School of Mines in Colorado. In 1891 he married Miss Florence Hunt, a lady of refinement, culture and religious conviction, who is an active and influential member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. They have an interesting little daughter named Catharine. Mr. and Mrs. Price have a beautiful home in Hailey, which is in every respect all that the term can imply under the most favorable circumstances. They have a wide and constantly enlarging circle of acquaintance and are universally admired for their many good qualities of mind and heart. They are influential members of the community and their influence is a good and helpful one.