Arnold Krekel

Arnold Krekel (March 12, 1815 – July 14, 1888) was a United States federal judge.

Biography

Born in Langenfeld, Prussia, Krekel emigrated to the United States in 1832. He attended St. Charles College, and read law to enter the bar in 1844. He was a surveyor in St. Charles County, Missouri. He was a Justice of the peace there from 1841 to 1843, and was in private practice beginning in 1844. He was a county and city attorney of St. Charles City and St. Charles County from 1846 to 1850, and was an editor of the St. Charles Democrat from 1850-1864. He was a member of the Missouri House of Representatives in 1852.

Krekel served in the Union Army throughout the Civil War as colonel of a regiment of Missouri volunteers. He was president of the state constitutional convention in 1865. On March 6, 1865, Krekel, a Democrat, was nominated by President Abraham Lincoln to a seat on the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri vacated by R.W. Wells. Krekel was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 9, 1865, and received his commission the same day. He served on the court until his retirement on June 9, 1888.

The house that Judge Krekel built on Cliff Street in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1866 still stands and today is operated as a bed & breakfast Cliff Manor Inn.

He was a lecturer in the University of Missouri School of Law in Columbia, Missouri, from 1872 to 1875. He died in St. Charles, Missouri.

Sources

• Arnold Krekel at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). "Krekel, Arnold" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.