thumb|upright|Photographic portrait of Rose from Addresses of U.M. Rose : with a brief memoir (1914)
Uriah Milton Rose (March 5, 1834 – August 12, 1913) was an American lawyer graceful and courteous, and "one of the leading legal lights of the nation", "a towering figure in the...life of Little Rock".
Another Arkansas judge, J. T. Coston, described him thus:
<blockquote>Arkansas is the home of the late U. M. Rose, a scholar and statesman. Judge Rose was one of the great lawyers not only of Arkansas but of the United States. Cultured, refined and modest as a woman, with a titanic intellect, he was a general favorite wherever he was known. Judge Dillon, after being thrown with him on numerous occasions at long intervals, pronounced Judge Rose the most cultured man he had ever known. He loved his profession, and I heard him state only a year or two before he died, while attending the Arkansas Bar Association, that during his more than half a century experience in the practice of law he had never had a serious misunderstanding with a brother lawyer.</blockquote>
President Theodore Roosevelt called him "the brainiest man I have ever met".
Childhood and personal life
Rose was born in Bradfordsville, Kentucky, on a farm of 300 or 400 acres, on March 5, 1834, son of Joseph and Nancy Rose. His father was a physician and a Campbellite. He was his parents' third son and had two half-siblings from his father's first marriage to a Miss Armstrong from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied French and German with Europeans who happened to be in Bradfordsville. daughter of William Gibbs, who was a grandson of George Washington's aide and bodyguard Caleb Gibbs.
Career
In Batesville
After graduating in 1853, in search of warmer weather, Rose, his new wife, and his brother-in-law William T. Gibbs moved to Batesville, Arkansas, in 1853. He set up a law practice there in partnership with Gibbs. The Roses had three children. "The couple bought a house on the north side of Main Street, between Third and Fourth Streets, and U. M. Rose rented a small building next door to use as an office.") Rose subsequently moved his practice to Washington, Arkansas.
In 1860, he was appointed chancellor (chancery judge and chief county officer) of Pulaski County; "county judges in Arkansas have served for decades as one of the strongest political forces in the state." "The [Pulaski County] chancellor's office was the only such office in the state and thus had statewide jurisdiction.")
In Little Rock
The end of the Confederacy meant the end of his position as judge. Moving to Little Rock in 1865, where he and his wife had four additional children, In 1893 Wilson Hemingway, associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court since 1889, resigned from the court to join them. In 1905, the firm merged with Cantrell and Loughborough, and the partners adopted the named Rose, Hemingway, Cantrell, and Loughborough, which remained the name of the firm long after Rose's death. The firm did not become the Rose Law Firm until 1980; When faced with a colonial document, he "exhibited a degree of almost perfect familiarity with Spanish". He was "deeply versed in the classics", public speaker. In 1872 was the first of several trips to Europe, in which he visited Italy, Austria, Scandinavia, Russia, and Turkey; he also visited Mexico. He was the organizer of the Arkansas Bar Association, whose first meeting was in his office,
Rose died at his home at 620 West 3rd St., Little Rock, Arkansas, on August 12, 1913, as a consequence of a fall. "The funeral was attended perhaps by the largest number ever gathered on a similar occasion." People attended from "every section of the state".
He and his wife had nine children who survived to adulthood, in order of birth: John M. Rose (1855-1915), an attorney who practiced next door to his father but not in partnership with him, His son George was "known and honored not only as a most successful lawyer, but as a litterateur, art critic and scholar." His grandson U.M. Rose was president of the New Mexico Bar Association.
Legacy
Rose was the only delegate from Arkansas among the 75 lawyers who formed the American Bar Association in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1872. He was president from 1891 to 1892 and again from 1901 to 1902.
In 1882, at his suggestion, 68 lawyers from across the state formed the Arkansas State Bar Association. "Rose was elected chairman of the association's first executive committee and, between 1898 and 1899, served as president." It became a central building of Little Rock Junior College when that institution was founded in 1927; when the Junior College became the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and moved to a larger campus, the former campus was used by Philander Smith College, where the building is currently (2019) the James M. Cox Administration Building.
In 1917, the state of Arkansas donated a marble statue of Rose to the U.S. Capitol's National Statuary Hall Collection. In 2019 the decision was made to replace his statue, and that of James Paul Clarke, with statues of Johnny Cash and Daisy Lee Gatson Bates. Arkansas state Sen. David Wallace, the lead sponsor of the bill to replace Rose, cited Rose's perceived lack of name recognition in the present day, saying his "time has faded".
In 1944, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Uriah M. Rose was launched. She was scrapped in 1972.