John G. Milburn

John George Milburn was of a type of distinguished “office lawyers” which might be called old-fashioned if it were not for the fact that fashion in that branch of the profession does not change from generation to generation. Learned in the law, his advice to clients, especially in the corporation field, was sound and his judgment of contested questions of business policy highly valued, both in his earlier career at Buffalo and during his later participation in Carter & Ledyard’s important professional responsibilities at New York. He was closely identified as counsel with the legal side of the New York Stock Exchange’s affairs.

Personally, Milburn was a man of great dignity tempered with urbanity. His fellow-New Yorkers as a community came in contact with him rather rarely, unless when Milburn was presiding at some public or social function, a duty which he performed with much gracefulness. It was by one of the accidents of chance that his name became identified with an episode in American history. Practicing in 1901 at Buffalo and serving as President of the Pan-American Exposition in that city, Milburn became the personal host of President McKinley, and it was at Milburn’s house that McKinley died, after the assassin’s shot at the public reception in the Exposition grounds.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1931 Century Association Yearbook