6th Nevada Attorney General
Term: January 1, 1883 - January 3,
1887
Biography
William H. Davenport, born in Delaware in 1831, came west when Nevada
still was a territory. In 1862, he represented Storey County in the Nevada
Territorial House of Representatives, and in 1864, he served as the Police
Recorder and Justice of the Peace for Virginia City. Thereafter, he
established a law practice in Treasure City (present day White Pine County) and
then in Eureka, Nevada, as the city’s first attorney. In 1872, Mortimer
Fuller, Judge of Nevada’s Ninth Circuit District Court, appointed Davenport as
the “Register in Bankruptcy”[1]
for the District of Nevada. In 1880, the voters elected him District
Attorney of Eureka County.[2]
Election of 1882
Elected as Nevada’s sixth Attorney General on November 7, 1882,
Davenport (Republican) received 7,181 (50.2%) of the 14,297 votes cast, and G.W.
Merrill (Democrat) 7,116 received (49.8%) votes.[3]
Office Administration and Duties
Davenport, as his predecessors before him, had no deputies or other
support staff according to the Nevada Attorney General’s budgets for the
1883–1885 and 1885–1887 state biennial fiscal periods:
1883–1885 Budget
|
$6,000
|
|
$6,000
|
Attorney General’s Salary
|
|
|
Office
expenses came from an appropriation “[f]or a current expense
appropriation, to defray the telegraphic, postage, and contingent
expenses of the several state officers, Supreme Court, and State
Library, to be expended under the direction of the Lieutenant Governor,
State Controller, and Secretary of State, $8,000”
|
1885–1887 Budget
|
$6,000
|
|
$6,000
|
Attorney General’s Salary
|
|
|
Office
expenses came from an appropriation “[f]or a current expense
appropriation, to defray the telegraphic, postage, and contingent
expenses of the several state officers, Supreme Court, and State
Library, to be expended under the direction of the Lieutenant Governor,
State Controller, and Secretary of State, $6,000”
|
The 1883 and 1885 Nevada State Legislatures added no additional duties
for the Attorney General to perform. Davenport’s last report to the legislature
(Nevada Attorney General’s Report, 1886) stated that he suffered from “physical
indisposition.”
[1] “Register in Bankruptcy “may be defined to be,
‘[t]he incumbent of an office created by the U. S. Bankrupt Act of 1807
OR 1867—an assistant to the United States District Judge in Bankruptcy
Proceedings.’” Manual of the U.S. Bankruptcy Act, 1867:
With the Rules, Orders, and Forms of Proceedings Thereunder.
Conveniently Annotated, Classified, and Arranged. Clinton
Rice. Philip & Solomons, Publishers, 1867.
[2] Nevada Historical Society Quarterly,
Volume XXVII, Spring 1984, Number 1, page 16.
[3] Political History of Nevada, 2006, page 358.