H. Welborn Ayres

Who was H. Welborn Ayres?

Harrison Welborn Ayres was a 20th-century judge of the Louisiana Second Judicial District Court, based in Jonesboro, and the state Second Circuit Court of Appeal, anchored in Shreveport.

He served on the district court from 1942 to 1953, having been unopposed in 1948. He was thereafter elected as a Democrat to the ten-parish circuit court, on which he served beginning January 1, 1954, after his election to succeed the retiring Judge J. Frank McInnis of Minden. Under state law, Ayres retired from the bench when he reached his 75th birthday in 1975. To win the circuit court seat, Ayres defeated the Minden attorney John T. Campbell, a member of a prominent political family.

Ayres was born to James W. Ayres and the former Lula Bumgardner in the village of Ashland in northern Natchitoches Parish. On May 21, 1918, Ayres graduated from the former Ashland High School. The commencement ceremony was held in the since disbanded Ashland Methodist Church because a fire had destroyed the school building only a few weeks earlier. He then obtained his law degree from the Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge. In 1979, Ayres, as a former judge, penned a manuscript containing part of the history of the village within the annual report of the Ramah Cemetery Association.