James A. Baker

Career Houston Light Guard

In 1874, Baker joined the Houston Light Guard, a local militia organized the previous year. One of its members, Jonas Shearn Rice had attended TMI, and sought Baker as a member. The Houston Light Guard was a vehicle for local social networking, as many lawyers and business leaders joined the militia or lent it material support. William Marsh Rice owned fifteen mortgage bonds drawn for the unit, and two of his nephews were members, including another TMI graduate and future mayor of Houston, Horace Baldwin Rice. Local newspaper publisher Allen Charles Gray campaigned for the group and gave it favorable coverage, while his brother Edwin Fairfax Gray, a Civil War veteran, trained and drilled the first wave of recruits. The gray and black uniforms of the militia's early days revealed their allegiances to the Confederacy and the Lost Cause, though the militia replaced these uniforms in the 1880s with a scheme based on blue pants and red coats.

In May 1878, Baker was promoted to first sergeant. He received a promotion to captain in August 1879, after which he led the honor guard presented to President Grant for his visit to Houston in 1880. He resigned his commission and retired from active duty in the early-1880s. For decades, he attended group functions and supported the Light Guard as an advisor, promoter, and fundraiser.

By the end of 1889, Baker was able to bring cases to the Supreme Court of Texas.

During this period, Baker defended Rice's estate when a new will of his late wife surfaced. Elizabeth "Libbie" Baldwin Brown Rice died on July 24, 1896. She had drawn two simple wills in 1888 and 1892. The second of these left most of her estate to her husband, but neither will suggested that she had great personal wealth. Though Texas was a community property state, William and "Libbie" married in 1867 after Rice had already built most of this fortune. Their primary residences were New York City and Dunellen, New Jersey, but they also maintained an apartment at the Capital Hotel in Houston, where they spent many winters. In April 1896, Libbie was in poor health and she sought warmer climate as a remedy, bringing the couple to Houston. She developed a friendship with a local lawyer and his wife, Orren T. and Marian Seward Holt, while also entertaining a niece from Cleveland, Mamie Baldwin Huntington. Libbie suffered a stroke the next month, and she died in Wisconsin two months after. During her illness in Houston, Holt wrote a new will for her, naming himself as sole executor and designating ten percent of the proceeds as his commission, which was witnessed only by two of his in-laws. The 1896 will assumed $2 million in community property, and designated $200,000 to Huntington, and another $150,000 to Huntington's close relations. Rice had not known about any of his wife's wills, but he was so informed by Baker in September. Two weeks later Baker drew a new will for Rice, which bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the foundation for the Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science, and Art. Along with Judge John Bartine, Baker was an executor. Holt filed Libbie's 1896 will in Harris County on March 22, 1897. Baker and his firm represented Rice. Holt prevailed in the probate hearing as the judge admitted the will and accepted Holt as executor.

Holt filed lawsuits in four counties, asserting Libbie's community property interests in those places. Baker filed an appeal against the probate hearing and lost. He next moved with a counter-suit in federal court, claiming that Holt had no standing to file for the estate since the Rices never established Texas as their residence. The laws of New York should apply, Baker argued, which was not a community property state. The U.S. Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Texas consolidated all of the lawsuits and moved them to federal jurisdiction. Over the next two years, Baker interviewed witnesses to the Rice marriage in Houston and New York in preparation for the impending case. The trial was scheduled for early October.

Rice murder On September 23, 1900, William Marsh Rice died at his home in New York City. The Houston Post reported Rice's attorney as Albert T. Patrick, who was reportedly managing Rice's affairs. Patrick, however, was an attorney who pressed a lawsuit challenging the contents of Rice's second wife's will and control over the Rice fortune. Baker and Rice's brother Frederick rushed to New York in order to answer Patrick's claims.

Rice's valet, Charles Jones, sent a telegram to Baker with news of his boss's death on the afternoon of September 24. Baker and Frederick Rice telegraphed contacts in Houston and New York, while requesting that Norman S. Meldrum secure all papers at the deceased man's apartment. Hours later, Baker and Frederick Rice embarked a Southern Pacific train for New York via New Orleans. Baker retrieved telegrams updating the situation in New Orleans; Montgomery, Alabama; and Danville, Virginia. Meldrum reported to Robert Lovett, one of Baker's law partners. Aboard the train, Baker and Frederick Rice hypothesized that Jones and Patrick conspired to defraud the William Marsh Rice estate. The pair arrived at William Marsh Rice's apartment on the morning of September 27. Baker questioned Patrick at length about his relationship with Rice and the 1900 will. He confronted Jones about why he waited nearly a full day to inform Baker's office about Rice's death.

Baker, acting as Rice's personal attorney and as a defender of the interests of his large estate, helped to solve the murder plot. Rice was chloroformed by Jones, on September 23, 1900, in his apartment on Madison Avenue. Patrick posed as Rice's attorney in New York, and was the mastermind behind murdering Rice. Patrick produced what was ostensibly Rice's new will, but it was a forgery produced by Patrick himself. Baker alerted the police about the potentially suspicious motives behind Rice's death.

Rice Institute Trust The murder case and litigation over the will, which left a trust fund for the Rice Institute, took seven years to resolve. Baker, as an executor of the previous 1896 will, successfully argued for admitting it into evidence at the trial, a major point in the case. Because of Baker's business acumen, by the time the case ended, the endowment for Rice Institute had doubled to $10 million. In addition to the partners, the firm employed four attorneys and two clerks.

Baker was president of the Houston Bar Association, and a founder and a board member of the Houston Gas Company. He was the founding president of the Guardian Trust Company, and helped organize the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railway and the Southwestern Drug Company.

Local banking Beginning in 1905, Baker was a director of Union National Bank. He also organized Commercial National Bank. After engineering a merger with South Texas National Bank, he served as president, and later chairman of the board, of South Texas Commercial National Bank (1914–1926). In the 1930s, Baker was one of the incorporators of the Foundation and served as a trustee. He remained involved with the Houston Settlement Association after Alice's death, and he was active with both organizations during their inter-agency collaborations. He advised the San Jacinto Centennial Association, which organized celebrations of Texas history and raised funds for the San Jacinto Monument.

James Baker Jr. continued his father's commitment to Rice University, and Captain Baker's grandson James Baker III, was behind the James Baker Institute. He joined the Rice Board of Trustees in 1993.

During the 1890s, Baker and his wife vacationed with their children in Colorado each year. This family gathering included his sisters Anna B. Thompson and Nettie Duncan, in addition to his brothers-in-law, and his nephews and nieces. In 1898, the Bakers moved into a house at 1416 Main Street, which had been designed by George E. Dickey about a decade earlier. The house featured arches, gables, multiple bays, one of which was topped by a pointed turret. Baker commissioned William Ward Watkin to design a Spanish-Mediterranean house in Broadacres, a new subdivision he developed jointly with his son, James A. Baker Jr.

Death and legacy The family gravesite: Alice Baker Jones (foreground), Alice Graham Baker (left), Graham Baker (center), and Captain James A. Baker (right). Baker died in Houston on August 2, 1941. He was interred at Glenwood Cemetery in Houston. He bequeathed his home, "The Oaks", to Rice Institute (Rice University). Baker died while head of the 100-year-old law firm, Baker, Botts, Andrews, and Wharton.

Baker is the namesake of Baker College, a residential college at Rice University. The Commons of Baker was the main dining hall for the university when it opened in 1912. East Hall (or the "New Wing") and the Commons of Baker were designed and built by Cram, Goodhue, & Ferguson. Baker College was established in 1957, and now includes a library and residential tower named for Baker, and the Baker-Lovett quad.