The Real Perry Mason of Orange County

E. E. Keech, Esq.

E. E. Keech was one of the first great legal minds of Orange County, California and a highly respected citizen. He helped develop some of the county’s longest-lived institutions, and likely served as one of the models for popular culture’s most enduring fictional attorneys. His tragic sudden death would come as a shock to the community.

Elwin Eugene Keech was born in Wisconsin in April 1856. His father, Jonathan Keech, a Wisconsin pioneer, was born in Pennsylvania around 1830. His mother, Martha, was born in New York around 1833.

In 1870, Elwin was living on the family farm in Greenleaf, Meeker County, Minnesota, with his parents and his brothers: William L. Keech, born in Wisconsin around 1854; and Edward, born in Minnesota around 1861. Clearly, the farm was doing well, as they employed a domestic servant. 

A young E. E. Keech.

His other brothers (or perhaps half-brothers) were Mirlon Keech, born about 1874; and H. M. Keech, born about 1879. In the 1880 Census, Elwin’s father, Jonathan, is shown married to a woman named Isabelle. Isabelle was born about 1841 in Ohio. 

Elwin attended Holbrook's Normal School, Lebanon, Ohio, in the 1880s and was employed as an instructor in the school immediately after his graduation. Later, he taught at the Glasgow Normal School in Kentucky. The last four years of his teaching career were spent as a Professor of Mathematics. 

He also graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio with a degree in Civil Engineering.

Keech married Amelia Boyle on August 12, 1884, in Hopkins County, Kentucky.  Amelia was born November 5, 1866, in Nabo, Kentucky. Most likely she met Keech when he attended Holbrook's Normal School. 

Amelia Boyle

He then moved to Orange County around 1886 and worked as a surveyor while he studied the law. He was admitted to legal practice around 1889. For many years, his law office was in the First National Bank Building at 4th St. and Main in Santa Ana (later remodeled as the Otis Building). 

In 1888, Keech was secretary of the Prohibition Club of Santa Ana and was a candidate for Los Angeles County Clerk on the Prohibition ticket. In some respects, his political views echoed those of Southern Democrats. He claimed, however, that he was once a Republican. Either way, he was – in the words of newspaperman Dan M. Baker – “the only consistent prohibitionist in the county.”

When Orange County broke off from Los Angeles County in 1889, the Santa Ana Standard suggested that Keech would be an excellent choice to fill the new county’s single judgeship. He never did serve as a judge, but at one point he did serve as City Attorney for Santa Ana.

Keech was an early member of Santa Ana’s first Unitarian Church and of their Unity Club, which discussed a wide range of social, moral, and intellectual topics. He was a member of the Santa Ana Wheelmen (a bicycle club) in 1893, was president of the Santa Ana School Board in 1894, and was a notary public for many years.

In 1896, it appears Keech took a temporary position on the East Coast. The Abingdon Male Academy listed Professor E. E. Keech of Santa Ana, California in their 1896-97 circular. The Academy was located in the town of Abingdon, in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. It was a prep school that also provided “practical business education to the young man who finds it impossible to pursue a complete college course.”

In any case, Keech didn’t stay away from California for very long. In 1899, he hired L.A. architect G. S. Garrett to design a three-story, 19-room house at 201 E. Washington, at Bush St. in Santa Ana. It was completed in 1901. Prior to this, the Keech family lived at 714 N. Parton. 

Keech-Klatt House (1899), 201 E. Washington St., Santa Ana (Photo by author)

Meanwhile, E. E. Keech’s professional reputation continued to grow. In 1901, he was one of the ten attorneys who founded the Orange County Bar Association. Fellow attorney Horatio J. Forgy remembered, “At the time of the organization of the Orange County Bar Association, Mr. Keech was one of the most active members in organizing the association; and he did it with the sole idea and purpose of strengthening the integrity of the ethics of the profession."

Keech, whose extensive personal law library was locally renown, also served on the first board of trustees for the Orange County Law Library, from 1891 to 1895. 

Keech was a stern authoritarian as a parent.  His children were…

• Helen J. Keech: Born in Kentucky Nov. 27, 1885. She was on the Santa Ana High School debate team in early 1905 and was manager of the Whittier College track team in 1906-1907. She became a teacher, married a man named McCarthy, and moved to Santa Barbara. Helen died in Eureka, California on Dec. 6, 1980. 
• Madelaine V. Keech: Born in California around 1903. She was still living with mother in 1920. She committed suicide.  
• Cara M. Keech: Born in California in April 1891. She served as a nurse during WWI. Her first assignment, in 1918, was at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco. However, she was soon sent overseas to serve as a dietitian. Cara contracted the flu aboard ship and was taken to the hospital upon arrival in Portsmouth, England. She died there on Oct. 17, 1918.  The 1919 Santa Ana High School Ariel included a tribute: “In the call of Democracy the need for those angels of mercy – the Red Cross nurses – was very great, and from our midst the following went forth to answer the call: Cara Keech, 1909, who made the “supreme sacrifice;” Edith Cole, 1907; Florence Crozier; Anna Laird.
• Dana Eugene Keech: Born in Santa Ana on Dec. 11, 1894. Served in the Casual Detachment, Company L during WWI (was on duty in Arcadia, CA at time of father's death.). Dana’s childhood friend, historian Charles D. Swanner wrote, “Dana was enthusiastic about aircraft and we watched him make a glider in his father’s barn. He tried it out at Red Hill, northeast of Tustin, and although it was wrecked on its first flight, it did glide for a short distance. Glenn Martin made his first aeroplane and we followed his efforts to fly with great interest.” Dana Keech first married Carlotta Elizabeth Loner Kilgo, and later married Jewel Dorothy Hickox. He died in San Bernardino on June 10, 1983. Carlotta died in 1992 in San Bernardino. Jewel died in Los Angeles in 1988.
• Hugh Boyle Keech: Born in California on Apil 29, 1889. He was working in an ax factory in 1910. He later served as an Army aviator, stationed out of San Diego, in WWI. Hugh died in Long Beach on April 19, 1978.  
• Douglas William Keech: Born in California on June 2, 1901. He married Carmencita K. Gardom (a native of Canada) in Orange County on July 1, 1932. In 1976 he was an apartment building manager in San Francisco. He died on April 27, 1991 in San Francisco.

E. E. and Amelia with two of their children.

Keech’s sister-in-law, Lucie V. Boyle also lived with the family for many years.

In 1909, a young man named Erle Stanley Gardner came to “read law” under the tutelage of E. E. Keech. Gardner spent fifty hours a week as a clerk Keech’s office and lived in the Keech home. He spent his free time studying and boxing. 

Historian and attorney Charles Swanner remembered, “Dana Keech had purchased a pair of boxing gloves and Gardner, who was quite proficient as an amateur boxer, was teaching Dana some of the fundamentals of boxing. On one occasion I was watching the boxing lesson with my brother and Ray McTaggart, who thought he was pretty clever with his ‘mitts.’ He told my brother John and me, ‘I’m going to put on the gloves with Gardner and give him a hay-maker!’ We watched with anticipation as he started to spar around the barn with Gardner, but after he missed a couple wild swings, Erle floored him with an uppercut to the chin, and that ended the boxing exhibition for that evening.” 

Swanner also remembered that Gardner, “enjoyed the outdoors and took Dana with him to the foothills on numerous occasions.” It’s quite possible he may have even tagged along on some of Dana’s excursions to watch aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin test his aircraft.

Dana Keech in his hand-built aeroplane. Probably on the bluffs near the Newland House in Huntington Beach.

Gardner also dated Elwin’s daughter, Cara Keech, who was crushed when the relationship didn’t work out.

In 1911, with both eyes blackened from an amateur boxing match, Gardner passed the California bar exam. That same year, at age twenty-one, Gardner opened his own one-room law office in Merced. He practiced law for a time, but found his true calling as a fiction writer. He is most noted for his Perry Mason novels.

In the teens, Keech served as Counsel to Orange County Savings and Trust Co.  But he was better known in the field of water law, serving as counsel for the Santa Ana Valley Irrigation Company (SAVI) and the Anaheim Union Water Company. As the attorney for the Newbert Protection District he drafted the State law governing the formation of flood control districts. 

Cara Keech and Earle Stanley Gardner, Santa Ana.

In 1915, E.E. Keech was elected president of the Orange County Bar Association. He was the third to serve in that office.

On July 30, 1917, E.E. Keech died when the car he was driving was struck by a train at Northam Station, near Buena Park. There was speculation regarding the circumstances – It happened on a clear day on a flat stretch of road, and Keech was known as an extremely cautious driver. This prompted some to think his death was suicide. 

His pallbearers included some of the most prominent legal minds in Orange County. They were Superior Court Judge William H. Thomas; Keech’s former partner, Samuel M. Davis; attorneys Horatio J. Forgy, Roger Y. Williams and Richard Melrose; and SAVI trustee Edward M. Nealley.

Another memorial service was held as an official session of the Orange County Superior Court on August 10, 1917, in conjunction with the Orange County Bar Association. In his letter, inviting all local attorneys to attend the service, Judge Thomas wrote the following description of Keech:

“E. E. Keech, an affectionate husband, a kind father, a lawyer of rare attainments and splendid ability, a man of unimpeachable character and a high-grade citizen, is dead… He ever preached and practiced the highest ideals, and insisted on the maintenance of the best traditions of our profession…

“For nearly a third of a century he has practiced his profession at this Bar. His home was with us. He raised his family here. He was in truth one of us. He was not claimed by our profession only. He belonged to the entire community during his life. We have tried cased both with him and against him. None is there who can truthfully say he was not always a painstaking and able associate, or a worthy opponent, as well as a dangerous adversary, but one who always ‘played the game square.’…We all admired him as a lawyer and loved him as a man.”

Amelia Boyle Keech died in Orange County on May 9, 1946.