Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Kenesaw Mountain Landis

Butler County-born federal judge who fined Standard Oil $29 million in 1907 and, as baseball's first commissioner (1920-1944), banned the eight Black Sox players from the 1919 World Series against Cincinnati.

Born November 20, 1866, Millville
Died November 25, 1944, Chicago, Illinois

Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

At a glance

Born: November 20, 1866, Millville (Butler County) source
Died: November 25, 1944, Chicago, Illinois source
Buried: Oak Woods Cemetery, Chicago (Section J1, Lot 123) source
Also known as: Judge Landis, Kenny Landis
Known as: Law, Sports

Life story

Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born in Millville, Butler County, in 1866, the sixth child of Dr. Abraham Landis, a country doctor who had been wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, which gave the boy his name. The family moved to Seven Mile, also in Butler County, and then to Logansport, Indiana, in the mid-1870s; his Ohio years are his childhood and a spell at Cincinnati's YMCA Law School. As a federal judge in Chicago from 1905 to 1922 he fined Standard Oil a record $29,240,000 in 1907, a sentence later overturned, and presided over wartime trials of radicals. Club owners named him the first commissioner of baseball in November 1920 after the 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cincinnati Reds was found to have been fixed, and in 1921 he banned eight White Sox players for life despite their acquittal. He ruled baseball until his death in 1944 and was elected to the Hall of Fame that year; he is also criticised for doing nothing to end the game's colour line.

Ohio ties

Millville (1866-1869)
birthplace; his father practised as a country physician there Butler County · source
Seven Mile (1869-1875)
boyhood home before the family moved to northern Indiana Butler County · source
Cincinnati (about 1889-1890)
law student at Cincinnati's YMCA Law School (now Chase College of Law) before finishing at Union College of Law in Chicago in 1891 Hamilton County · source
Cincinnati (1919-1921)
the fixed 1919 World Series that led to his appointment was played against the Cincinnati Reds Hamilton County · source

Timeline

1864 His father, Union surgeon Abraham Landis, was badly wounded in the leg by a spent cannonball at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, on June 17, and refused amputation at gunpoint. source
1866 Born November 20 in Millville, Butler County, the sixth child and fourth son of Abraham and Mary Kumler Landis. source
1869 The family moved to Seven Mile, Ohio. source
1875 The family moved to northern Indiana, settling in Logansport, where his father farmed. source
1883 Having left school at 15, taught himself shorthand and became official court reporter for the Cass County, Indiana, circuit court. source
1889 Admitted to the Indiana bar; then enrolled at Cincinnati's YMCA Law School. source
1891 Graduated from Union College of Law in Chicago. source
1893 Became private secretary to Secretary of State Walter Q. Gresham, his father's old Civil War commander. source
1905 Nominated by Theodore Roosevelt and confirmed on March 18 as judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. source
1907 On August 3 fined Standard Oil of Indiana $29,240,000, then the largest fine ever imposed on a corporation; it was reversed on appeal in 1908. source
1920 Became the first commissioner of baseball on November 12. source
1921 On February 2 Ohio congressman Benjamin F. Welty offered a resolution to impeach him for holding both his judgeship and the commissioner's job. source
1921 On August 3, the day after a jury acquitted the Black Sox players, banned them from professional baseball 'regardless of the verdict of juries.' source
1922 Resigned his judgeship effective March 1. source
1944 Died November 25 in Chicago and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in a special vote soon after. source

Stories

Named for a battlefield

Abraham Landis was a Union Army surgeon under Lieutenant Colonel Walter Q. Gresham during Sherman's advance through Georgia. On June 17, 1864, he set up his surgical headquarters in the shade of Kennesaw Mountain, and a spent Confederate cannonball bounced into his group and shattered his left leg below the knee. A doctor himself, he kept his fellow surgeons from amputating it by holding them off with a gun. When his sixth child was born in Millville, Ohio, two years later, the boy was named Kenesaw Mountain, after the battle; one 'n' was an accepted spelling then. The war injury later led the doctor to cut back his practice, and Gresham, his old commander, gave the son his first job in Washington in 1893.

Source

Rockefeller hears the news in Cleveland

In 1907 Landis tried Standard Oil of Indiana on 1,903 counts of taking illegal railroad rebates, and the jury convicted on all of them. To set the fine he subpoenaed John D. Rockefeller, who had dodged court appearances since 1888; marshals finally served him in Massachusetts, and he testified in Chicago that he knew almost nothing of the company's structure. On August 3 Landis imposed the maximum, $29,240,000. Rockefeller was playing golf in Cleveland when a telegram brought the news. He calmly told his partners the amount, shot a personal best, and said Landis would be dead a long time before the fine was paid. He was right: the appeals court reversed the sentence in 1908, and Standard Oil was acquitted at a retrial.

Source

An Ohio congressman tries to impeach him

Landis kept his federal judgeship after he became baseball commissioner in November 1920, drawing criticism almost at once. On February 2, 1921, Benjamin F. Welty, a lame-duck Democratic congressman from Ohio, offered a resolution calling for his impeachment. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer found no legal bar to holding both posts, but the House Judiciary Committee voted 24-1 to investigate. Welty left office on March 4, and the criticism faded. In February 1922 Landis announced his resignation from the bench, saying there were not enough hours in the day for all his activities.

Source

Sites to know

Homes, graves, markers, museums and monuments; the numbered ones are on the map.

1 Millville, birthplace (village centre; birth house not identified) (unknown)
Millville Butler County · source
2 Seven Mile, boyhood home 1869-1875 (village centre) (unknown)
Seven Mile Butler County · source
3 Redland Field, later Crosley Field, Cincinnati home games of the 1919 World Series (demolished)
Cincinnati Hamilton County · source
Grave of Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Oak Woods Cemetery (cemetery coordinates)
Chicago, Illinois source

Ohio places

Where Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born, lived, worked and is remembered, with the ZIP code, town and county pages for each.

Born: Millville, Butler County Millville · Butler County
Connected: Millville, Butler County Millville · Butler County
Connected: Seven Mile, Butler County Seven Mile · Butler County
Connected: Cincinnati, Hamilton County Cincinnati · Hamilton County
Connected: Cincinnati, Hamilton County Cincinnati · Hamilton County

Myths and corrections

Things often said about Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and what the record shows.

Often said Landis was a Southerner (Negro league historian John Holway called him 'the hard-bitten Carolinian').

The record Landis was born in Millville, Ohio, and raised in Indiana; the Carolinian label is an error, whatever one concludes about his record on baseball's colour line. source

Often said His name is spelled Kennesaw, after the battlefield.

The record His own name has one 'n': Kenesaw. Both spellings were used for the Georgia battle site in the 1860s; Kennesaw later became standard for the mountain. source

Documents

Primary records: patents, letters, court and government files, nominations and old county histories, each at the archive that holds it.

Landis, Kenesaw Mountain: Biographical Directory of Article III Federal Judges Federal Judicial Center
Kenesaw Mountain Landis, SABR Biography Project Society for American Baseball Research
LANDIS, K.M., JUDGE (Harris & Ewing glass negative, 1905) 1905, Library of Congress

Pictures

Free to use with the credit shown. Select a picture for the original and its license.

Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis shakes hands with Babe Ruth while keeping hold of Bob Meusel after refusi...
Public domain
Title: Clark Griffith, Judge Landis, Wm. M. Richardson, [10/2/24] Abstract/medium: National Photo Company Coll...
Public domain
Advertisement by the painter's union urging a boycott of both Chicago baseball teams and opposing Judge Landis...
Public domain
Title: Details settled for All-Star game. Washington, D.C., May 26. Final plans and details for the Fifth Annu...
Public domain
No known restrictions
An unsmiling Commissioner of Baseball Kenesaw Mountain Landis throws out the first pitch.
Public domain
Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis's plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Public domain
Warren Cook, an actor, stands in front of Judge Mountain Landis's bench in the 1917 government film, The Immig...
Public domain
L-R: Jacob Ruppert, Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, Tillinghast Huston, at the first game at Yankee Stadium, 4/18/192...
Public domain
Title: Jacob Ruppert, Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, Tillinghast Huston, at Yankee Stadium, 4/18/23 (baseball)] Abst...
Public domain
Title: Jacob Ruppert, Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, Tillinghast Huston, Harry Frazee, ? Flynn, at Yankee Stadium, 4...
Public domain
Title: John Heydler & Judge Landis raising of championship flag, 6/11/25 Abstract/medium: 1 negative : gla...
Public domain

Sources

Confidence. Medium: the main facts were confirmed, but some details (often an address or ZIP code) were not.

Every link goes to the original source. Profile researched 2026-10-15.

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