Leroy E. Quinlan, though admitted to the bar less than two years ago, had made a most promising beginning of a successful legal career and is now justifying the confidence of his friends and supporters by his administration of the office of county attorney of Rice County.
Mr. Quinlan is a native of Kansas, was born at Hoisington May 22, 1893. His grandfather, Charles Michael Quinlan, was born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1832, came to America when a young man, settled on a farm in Indiana, married there, and enlisted and went all through the Civil war as a Union soldier. He was with General Sherman on the Atlanta campaign and march to the sea and after the war he resumed farming and in a few years brought his family to Barton County, Kansas. He finally retired from the farm and spent his last years in Woods County, Oklahoma, where he died in 1902.
W. J. Quinlan, father of County Attorney Quinlan, was born April 6, 1869, in Northern Indiana and was a small child when his parents came out to Barton County, Kansas. In that frontier district he grew up and married and spent several years as a railroad man. At the opening of the Cherokee strip in 1893 he went to Oklahoma, joined in the rush, and was one of those fortunate in securing a homestead. He acquired 160 acres near Alva in Woods County and continued to live in that part of Oklahoma until 1911, when he returned to Kansas and located in Rice County. Here he had since continued farming and moved to his present place a half mile west and a mile and a half north of Lyons. His home farm is 160 acres, but he also owned 240 acres five miles west of Lyons, a quarter section in Woods County, Oklahoma, and about sixty acres of farm land near Houston, Texas. His old homestead in Woods County, Oklahoma, he sold a number of years ago. Politically he is a democrat. W. J. Quinlan married Lucy Hamilton, who was born in Southern Pennsylvania September 4, 1873. LeRoy is the oldest of their five children. Arthur is now a soldier in the new National Army. Harry died at the age of six months, and the next child, also a son, died in infancy. Helen, the youngest of the family, is a sophomore in the Lyons High School.
LeRoy E. Quinlan was taken to Oklahoma during his infancy and his first recollections are of the country around Alva. He attended the rural schools of Woods County and also the Alva public schools and completed the course through the junior year at the Northwestern State Normal at Alva. On returning to Kansas he entered the Lyons High School, where he graduated in 1912. Mr. Quinlan soon afterwards took up the study of law at Washburn College in Topeka, and was granted his LL. B. degree in 1916. He was admitted to the bar in the same year and at once began attacking the problems and difficulties of practice at Lyons, where his initial success is a most favorable auspice for the future. In 1916, soon after returning from college, he was elected county attorney on the democratic ticket, and is now giving practically all his time and attention to that office.
Mr. Quinlan is a member of the First Presbyterian Church at Lyons, and had membership in the Rice County, the State and American Bar associations. On January 28, 1917, at Alva, Oklahoma, he married Miss Irene Rebber, a daughter of C. H. and Myra (Lewis) Rebber, and her parents live at Alva, where her father is a merchant.