Lawrence Archer

Lawrence Washington Archer (1820 to 1910) was an American lawyer, judge and politician, born in Anderson County, South Carolina, who became an early settler of San Jose, California. He studied law in Abbeville, South Carolina, passed the Mississippi bar in 1841 and practised in Yazoo County before moving to St. Joseph, Missouri, where the governor appointed him a district attorney. He reached California in 1852 and San Jose in 1853, served as mayor of San Jose in 1856 and again in 1875, was a Santa Clara County judge from 1868 until he resigned in 1871, and sat as a regent of the University of California from 1868 to 1880. A Democrat, he lost two races for the United States House of Representatives and served one term in the California State Assembly in 1875.