John Thomas Sims, probate judge of Wyandotte county, Kansas, and an able member of the Kansas City bar, was born in Robinson, Crawford county, Illinois, Dec. 31, 1864, son, of Thomas Jefferson Sims, a native of Virginia and a blacksmith and wagonmaker by trade, who later became a merchant miller. He died in Robinson, Ill., about 1877. The mother of Judge Sims was Miss Arminta McComas Elledge, born in Kentucky in 1828, and died in Robinson, Ill., in 1884. Judge Sims has one brother and two sisters living. His eldest sister is Mrs. Ellen May Firebaugh, wife of Dr. Isaac L. Firebaugh, a prominent physician of Robinson, Ill. Mrs. Firebaugh is also prepared for the profession of medicine, having graduated from Rush Medical College, at Chicago, but she does not practice. She is a literary woman of talent and of note, being the author of a book entitled "The Physician's Wife," and frequent contributor of stories to the Youth's Companion and other Eastern periodicals. Miss Stella, the younger sister of Judge Sims, is a graduate in dentistry and is very successfully practicing that profession at Robinson, Ill. Charles Raymond, the only brother of Judge Sims, is a telegrapher by profession. Judge Sim was reared at Robinson and received an excellent early education in the public schools of that city. At the age of seventeen he left school as a student, and a year later became a teacher. After teaching three terms in Crawford county, Illinois, he came to Kansas, in 1884, and taught three more terms in that state, two of them in Labette county and one in Pratt county. Meanwhile, he had studied law while engaged in teaching and, in 1895, was admitted to the bar in Kansas City, Kan., in which city he had located in 1890. From 1885 to 1890 he was first a resident of Pratt, Kan., and later of Joplin, Mo. Since his location in Kansas City in 1895 he has devoted his attention to law, though he has also held offices during much of the time. In 1893 he was elected a justice of the peace, was reëlected in 1895, and again in 1897, serving as such from 1893 to 1897, at which time his office, by legislative enactment, was abolished. In 1905 he was elected judge of the police court, was reëlected to that office in 1907, and again in 1909, but resigned on Dec. 12, 1910, in order to accept the office of probate judge of Wyandotte county, to which office he was elected in November, 1910. Judge Sims is a Republican in his political views and for many years has been one of the most active workers of his party in Wyandotte county. He has frequently served as chairman of delegations of his party in various party and district conventions, and for two years was secretary of the Republican central committee of the Second Congressional district. He is a member of the Masonic order and has attained the Knight Templar degree. He is further fraternally affiliated with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Knights of Pythias, the Modern Woodmen of America, and the Ancient Order of United Workmen, and is now serving his third term as chairman of the law committee for the last named order in the State of Kansas. He associates professionally as a member of the Wyandotte County Bar Association and the Kansas State Bar Association. Judge Sims, as a lawyer, has those powers of mind which enable him to master the most intricate problems connected with the law, and that tenacity of purpose which makes him a forminable opponent at the bar, and his persistent and logical handling of all cases entrusted to him has secured him favorable decisions in some of the most important suits in the history of Kansas court proceedings. Judge Sims was married Oct. 24, 1893, to Miss Cora Anna Petri, of Parsons, Kan., and they have one daughter living—Elizabeth Arminta—who was born Aug 1, 1894. She is now a student in the Kansas City high school.