Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Reuben F. Laffoon of Claiborne, Tennessee
Reuben Francis Laffoon was born in Claiborne County, Tennessee, in March 1854, into a family whose story soon stretched far beyond the mountains of East Tennessee. His father, Drewry Laffoon, had been born in North Carolina and settled in Claiborne County as a farmer. His mother, Minerva Stone Laffoon, was a Tennessee woman. The strongest near-contemporary biographical source places the family in Claiborne County before their westward move in the fall of 1859, when they left Tennessee by wagon for Cass County, Missouri.
From Claiborne County to the Missouri Border
Laffoon’s earliest years belonged to Claiborne County, but his childhood was shaped by movement. When the family reached western Missouri, they settled on a farm in Cass County near the Kansas border. That region soon became one of the most violent borderlands in the country. Before and during the Civil War, guerrilla conflict, army movements, and divided loyalties tore through households and communities.
According to William Farrand Prosser’s 1903 biographical sketch, the Laffoon home stood on a heavily traveled public road, and Minerva Laffoon gave food to both Union and Confederate soldiers who came by the house. The family’s generosity left them nearly destitute, at one point reduced to wheat bran. When the danger grew too great, the family fled north to Nebraska City, Nebraska. After the war danger passed, they returned to Missouri and found their farm despoiled and burned over.
A Teacher on the Frontier
Out of that hard borderland childhood, Reuben F. Laffoon built a life through education. He attended schools near his family’s Missouri home and later completed his studies at the Southwest Missouri State Normal School at Warrensburg. At nineteen, he left home for western Kansas, then still a frontier region. For several years he taught school in Missouri and Kansas while reading law on his own. Prosser described him as drawn to pioneer life, traveling through the western and southwestern country, including Texas and Colorado.
In 1886, Laffoon was admitted to the bar at Coldwater, Kansas. He practiced there only a few months before making another western move, this time to Tacoma, Washington, in 1887. His life had already followed the larger migration path of many nineteenth century Appalachians. He had gone from East Tennessee to Missouri, from Missouri to Kansas, and from Kansas to the Pacific Northwest.
Tacoma, Real Estate, and Mining Law
Tacoma was still a young city when Laffoon arrived. During his first year there, he worked in real estate, but he soon returned to law. By 1903, Prosser placed his office at No. 303 in the Chamber of Commerce Building and described him as a respected member of the Pierce County bar. The same account says he spent nearly three years in the mining business in Nevada and later became financially connected with mining companies in Washington and Alaska. That practical experience helped him specialize in mining law.
His legal standing appears in other records as well. A revised 1900 federal roster of registered attorneys listed “Laffoon, R. F., Tacoma, Wash.” Herbert Hunt’s 1916 Tacoma history listed R. F. Laffoon among the members of the Tacoma Bar Association, which had been reorganized from the Pierce County Bar Association in 1911.
Laffoon’s mining law work also appears in court records. A Ninth Circuit appeal brief in C. M. Thorndyke and others against the Alaska Perseverance Mining Company listed R. F. Laffoon among the solicitors and counsel for the mining company. That source fits Prosser’s claim that Laffoon’s law practice had become closely tied to mining interests in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
Referee in Bankruptcy
By the 1920s, Laffoon’s name appeared in federal bankruptcy proceedings. In In re C. A. Taylor Logging & Lumber Co., decided in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington in 1928, the court record states that the matter had come on for hearing before “R. F. Laffoon, referee” on May 21, 1928. The case itself concerned a Washington state claim for industrial insurance premiums in bankruptcy, but for Laffoon’s biography its importance is simpler. It proves that late in life he was still serving in an official legal role in Tacoma.
That position also helps explain why some later references call him Judge Reuben Laffoon. He was not a federal district judge, but bankruptcy referees performed judicial duties within bankruptcy cases. His title in local memory likely grew out of that role.
Masonic Life and a Tacoma Home
Laffoon’s public standing in Tacoma was not limited to the courtroom. He was active in Masonic circles, and contemporary newspaper and Masonic source trails identify him with Tacoma’s fraternal world. The built environment of Tacoma also preserves a trace of his status. The Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation lists the Judge Reuben Laffoon House, built in 1912, among the known residential projects of architect Luther Twichell after Twichell left his partnership with Ambrose J. Russell and Frederick Heath.
In Prosser’s account, Laffoon married Emma Pearman in Missouri in 1880. The couple had two daughters, Agnes and Emma, and by the early twentieth century lived at 3522 South Eighth Street in Tacoma. Prosser’s closing assessment was typical of the booster biography style of the period, but it is still valuable because it was written while Laffoon was alive and active. It described him as a man who had risen through his own efforts into the class of prominent lawyers in his adopted city.
Death and the Record Trail Back to Claiborne County
Cemetery and memorial records give Reuben Francis Laffoon’s birth as March 10, 1854, in Claiborne County, Tennessee, and his death as June 28, 1929, in Tacoma, Pierce County, Washington, with burial in Tacoma Cemetery. A Washington state death record should still be checked for the strongest primary death documentation, but the cemetery record is a useful guide for confirming the final outline of his life.
The Claiborne County side of the story deserves more courthouse work. The Claiborne County Archives reports that it holds marriage, probate, deed, tax, will, merchants license and bond, and circuit court records, with records dating from 1800 into the 1980s. Those records are the right place to verify the Laffoon family’s land, probate, tax, and court footprint before the 1859 move to Missouri.
Why Reuben F. Laffoon’s Story Matters
Reuben F. Laffoon’s life is not the usual Claiborne County story. He did not remain in the Powell Valley or become known in Tennessee politics, music, war, or local office. Instead, his importance lies in the long path from Appalachian Tennessee into the American West.
His life shows how a Claiborne County child could be carried by family migration into the Missouri border conflict, then by education and ambition into Kansas law, Tacoma real estate, mining litigation, bankruptcy court, and Pacific Northwest civic life. He belonged to the same restless nineteenth century world that sent Appalachian families west by wagon, then onward again by rail, law book, land deed, and courtroom record.
For Claiborne County history, Laffoon is a reminder that local stories do not always stay local. Sometimes a name born in East Tennessee turns up decades later in Tacoma court records, federal attorney rosters, mining briefs, Masonic histories, and architecture files. The Appalachian thread is still there. It begins in Claiborne County, follows the Laffoon family wagon to Missouri, survives the Civil War borderland, and ends beside Puget Sound.
Sources & Further Reading
Prosser, William Farrand. A History of the Puget Sound Country: Its Resources, Its Commerce and Its People. Vol. 2. New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1903. https://archive.org/stream/historyofpugetso02pros_0/historyofpugetso02pros_0_djvu.txt
Hunt, Herbert. Tacoma: Its History and Its Builders; A Half Century of Activity. Vol. 2. Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1916. https://www.sos.wa.gov/library/research-collections/classics-washington-history/tacoma-its-history-and-its-builders-v2
Hodson, John Milton, William H. Upton, Jonas W. Brown, and Cornelius Hedges. Masonic History of the Northwest: A Graphic Recital of the Organization and Growth of Freemasonry in the North West States. San Francisco: History Publishing Company, 1902. https://archive.org/details/masonichistoryof00hods
United States District Court, Western District of Washington. “In re C. A. Taylor Logging & Lumber Co.” Federal Reporter 28 F.2d 526. October 9, 1928. https://case-law.vlex.com/vid/in-re-ca-taylor-890992767
United States Patent Office. Roster of Registered Attorneys Entitled to Practice Before the United States Patent Office. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900. https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Roster%201900%20Revised.pdf
Thorndyke, C. M., Maud Annette Greenig, James W. Kelly, and Walter F. Swan v. The Alaska Perseverance Mining Company. Brief of Appellee, United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, no. 1540. https://9chris.org/recentchanges/
Scripps, Edward, ed. “Laffoon Succeeds Judge Worden.” The Tacoma Times, July 23, 1912, 7. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn88085187/1912-07-23/ed-1/seq-7/
Blethen, Alden J., ed. “Masons Meet in Seattle.” The Seattle Daily Times, December 29, 1905, 5. https://www.seattletimes.com/
“Two Claim Estate of Debts.” The New York Times, March 7, 1912, 7. https://www.nytimes.com/
“Died Owing a Million.” The New York Times, June 9, 1912, 1. https://www.nytimes.com/
Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. “Luther Twichell.” Accessed July 9, 2026. https://dahp.wa.gov/historic-preservation/research-and-technical-preservation-guidance/architect-biographies/bio-for-luther-twichell
University of Washington Law Library. “Washington State Bench & Bar Collections.” Accessed July 9, 2026. https://lib.law.uw.edu/c.php?g=1331195&p=9803487
Claiborne County Archives. “Archives.” Claiborne County, Tennessee. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://claibornecountytn.gov/countyoffices/county-services/archives/
Tennessee State Library and Archives. “Genealogical ‘Fact Sheets’ About Claiborne County.” Tennessee Secretary of State. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://sos.tn.gov/tsla/pages/genealogical-fact-sheets-about-claiborne-county
Kivett, John J. “Claiborne County.” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Tennessee Historical Society. March 1, 2018. https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/claiborne-county/
Appalachian Regional Commission. “Claiborne, Tennessee.” Accessed July 9, 2026. https://arc.gov/states_counties/claiborne/
Find a Grave. “Reuben Francis Laffoon.” Memorial no. 133719673. Accessed July 9, 2026. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133719673/reuben-francis-laffoon
FamilySearch. “Claiborne County, Tennessee Genealogy.” Accessed July 9, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Claiborne_County%2C_Tennessee_Genealogy
Genealogy Trails. “Wills and Estate Records of Claiborne County, TN.” Accessed July 9, 2026. https://genealogytrails.com/tenn/claiborne/willsJ.html
Author Note: This story follows a Claiborne County native whose life carried him from East Tennessee into the legal and business world of Tacoma, Washington. Readers with access to Washington death records, Tacoma newspapers, or Claiborne County courthouse records may be able to add even more to the Laffoon family trail.