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Local historian John G. Edmonds was a springboard for this article.
This story doesn’t detail a crime or the life of a criminal. Instead, it highlights the life and times of a man who dealt with crimes and criminals every day of his professional life. George H. Buck acted as a judge in the Redwood City courthouse for 42 years. He made his mark in the local legal landscape and will forever be remembered as one of the most notable jurists to grace our city and county.
Buck was born in 1847 in Harrison, Maine. As a young adult, he taught school and studied law in Boston. He moved west for his health and arrived in Redwood City in 1874 with less than a dollar in his pocket and was only able to find work in a livery stable.
Not one to give up on a dream, he soon established a legal practice while working at his livery job and quickly rose up the local legal hierarchy, becoming a district attorney in 1882 and was elected to his first term as a judge in 1890.
He had a long and illustrious career. Towards the end of his time as a judge, he had, as proclaimed in a newspaper ad asking people to vote him in for another term, overseen 16,104 civil cases, 3,512 criminal cases, and 610 juvenile cases. Some of the highlights of his career included:
In December of 1914, he dismissed a grand jury that had eight women on it. Although he did not make a statement as to why he dissolved the jury, a particularly misogynist reporter for the San Jose Mercury News said that the women “spend more time shopping and baking biscuits than it does weighing the grains of human justice…” The reporter went on to state that Buck “…stood it for a while…then he got busy and ousted the jury out of the county government.” This dismissal did not sit well with the public and especially not with the female jurors who had been let go. In a February 1915 letter to one of those jurors, Buck nebulously wrote: “I am most heartily in favor of women serving on juries. The reason I dismissed (that) jury had nothing to do with the fact that there were women serving on it…”
He oversaw the naturalized citizenships of more than 1,100 foreign servicemen during World War I.
Buck rose to prominence in the community. In July of 1919, the San Mateo Daily News Leader reported: “(the) newly elected Noble Grand of the United Order of Druids…named Superior Judge George H. Buck chairman of the committee on appeals. Judge Buck has been a prominent member of the Druids for many years.”
In December of 1919, he became embroiled in his own legal drama when he was sued by a woman who had apparently sold the family home against her will. She stated in court documents that Buck threatened her with jail time if she did not sell the house. Buck adamantly denied this and witnesses backed him up.
In November of 1920, he awarded a man $300 after another man killed his deerhounds (Jim and Prince) at a home on Woodside Road.
In March of 1922, he sentenced two Daly City men to San Quentin prison for the burglary of the Christensen Ranch near Colma. The two thieves managed to get away with $51 and a watch chain.
But Buck’s judicial career came to a screeching halt and the fault may have been entirely his own. A jury trial of a disputed will was the talk of the town and the local community eagerly awaited the jury’s decision on this complicated case. But Buck surprised everyone by taking the decision away from the jury and making the final decision himself. And he made the wrong one, siding with an unpopular recipient of the will. There was an uproar and a movement began to remove him from the bench. Buck seemed unconcerned and told the San Mateo Times: “No matter what you do, somebody isn’t going to be satisfied. You’ve got the type in every community. They’re just a bunch of soreheads.”
Be that as it may, the damage was done and when election time rolled around Buck was not re-elected for the first time in several decades.
He retired to his home on Jefferson Avenue and died on July 5, 1938. He was buried in Union Cemetery next to his son, who had been tragically killed in 1888 when he was struck by a train at the corner of Brewster and Arguello.
Newspaper articles and court documents from the late 1800s to the late 1920s are full of news about the doings of Buck. His legal legacy will reach out for years to come.
