William C. Ferrell
District Attorney

1850-1851

---

William C. Ferrell

District Attorney William C. Ferrell -- elected April 1, 1850, in a contest in which three hundred seventy-seven votes were cast--was the people's prosecutor in the First Judicial District, which included San Diego and Los Angeles counties. In fact, he lived in San Diego for part of the one-year term that he actually served. He was age 39 when elected, and had just arrived from North Carolina, where he had been an attorney. His income as district attorney was largely derived from a ten percent cut of civil judgments as well as fees paid from guilty criminal defendants' fines. In October 1850, when it became clear that the state legislature would soon require a district attorney in each county -- drastically cutting his income -- Ferrell promptly quit. He would serve in other public positions in San Diego through the mid-1850s, on the first County Board of Supervisors, as county assessor and as district attorney of San Diego County. Then, apparently as a way to thwart his growing dependence on alcohol, in 1860 he moved to Mexico, building an adobe home with a vegetable garden and a large vineyard on a remote mesa south of Tijuana. He died in Mexico in 1883.

Reprinted from FOR THE PEOPLE -- Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office 1850-2000 by Michael Parrish. ISBN 1-883318-15-7