Leander Monks
American judge (1843-1919)

Leander John Monks (July 10, 1843 – April 19, 1919) was a justice of the Indiana Supreme Court from January 7, 1895, to January 7, 1913.
Early life and education
Monks was born in Winchester, Randolph County, Indiana, to George W. Monks and Mary A. Irvin. His father was twice elected county clerk, and served in the Indiana General Assembly for the 1855 session.
Monks was educated in the common schools, and attended Indiana University Bloomington from 1861 to 1863, gaining admission to the bar in Indiana in 1865, and entering the practice of law in 1866.
Legal and political career
Monks practiced with various attorneys, and, developing a fondness for politics, was made county chairman of the Republican Party, serving in that capacity through the campaigns of 1870 and 1872. He became a member of the Republican State Committee and the Executive Committee in 1874. He served on these committees during the campaigns of 1874 and 1876, resigning from them to become a candidate for circuit judge in 1878.
He was elected as a circuit judge, and was twice re-elected, in 1884 and 1890. He served his first two terms as judge of the Twenty-fifth Judicial Circuit, consisting of Randolph and Delaware counties. Before the beginning of his third term the circuit was divided, and in 1890 he was elected judge of a circuit consisting of Randolph county alone.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leander Monks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.