William Shepard Bryan

Born in New Bern, North Carolina, he was the son of Congressman John Heritage Bryan.[4] Bryan "received his early general and education in the South".[2] He graduated from the University of North Carolina and read law under the supervision of his father.[4] He moved to Baltimore in 1850, and read law to gain admission to the bar in Maryland in 1851, thereafter entering the practice of law.[4][2] He was a southern sympathizer during the American Civil War,[2] and was a presidential elector in the 1876 United States presidential election.[2]

In 1883, Bryan was elected as a Democrat to the Baltimore seat on the court of appeals vacated by the resignation of Judge James Lawrence Bartol.[4] As the only judge with no circuit duties to perform, he "delivered the opinion of the court in a large number of cases, many of them being of great importance and public interest".[4] He retired from the court in 1898.[1]

On October 1, 1857, Bryan married Elizabeth "Lizzie" Edmondson Hayward of Talbot County, Maryland, with whom he had a daughter and three sons.[1][2] Bryan's wife died in 1898.[1][2] Bryan himself died of liver cancer eight years later, at the age of 79,[2] at the home of his son, William Shepard Bryan Jr., who was then attorney general of the state.[1] He was interred in Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery.[2]