Judge Edgar M. Blessing

The son of a Civil War veteran, Edgar Marcus Blessing was born in Benton County on August 21, 1876.  He grew up on farms near Boswell and Oxford, then moved with his parents as a young man to a farm near Pittsboro in Hendricks County.  He taught school in Benton County, and graduated from the Indiana State Normal School in Terre Haute in 1899.  For the next two years he was principal of the high school in Plainfield.

In 1901, he decided to attend law school at the University of Michigan, graduated in 1904, and was admitted to the bar in Hendricks County the same year.  In 1906, he was elected Hendricks County prosecutor and served for two terms.

In 1921, Governor Warren McCray appointed him to the Indiana Public Service Commission, where he served until 1923.  He moved to Washington, D.C. to become Solicitor of the Post Office Department until 1926, when he returned to Danville to resume a law practice he had created in 1920 with A. Jewell Stevenson, a future judge of the Appellate Court.  He became a prominent attorney in Hendricks County during the 1930s.

In 1940 he was elected judge of the Indiana Appellate Court and served on the court from January 1, 1941 until his death in 1945.  He was Chief Judge in the May 1941 and November 1942 sessions.

He was a member of the American and Indiana State bar associations, the Sons of Veterans, and the Masons.

After an illness of two years, he died at home in Danville on June 20, 1945.

View the In Memoriam obituary for Judge Edgar M. Blessing
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