PRENDERGAST, ALBERT COLLINS (1853–1922). Albert Collins Prendergast, lawyer, legislator, and judge, was born in Springfield, Texas, on February 19, 1853, the son of Mary E. (Collins) and Davis M'Gee Prendergast. He graduated from Trinity University in 1874, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in Limestone County for about seven years. On November 2, 1876, he married Lillion L. Conoly at Kosse; they became the parents of five children. Prendergast moved to Waco in 1884 and for seven years practiced law in partnership with Waller S. Baker. Prendergast served as president of the Waco school board from 1893 to 1911. He represented the Sixty-second District in the House of the Twentieth Legislature, where he served as chairman of the committee on constitutional amendments. He was appointed by Governor Thomas M. Campbell to a judgeship in the Court of Criminal Appeals on January 9, 1911, and elected to the office in November 1912 for a six-year term. From June 27, 1913, to December 31, 1918, he was chief justice of the Court of Criminal Appeals. Prendergast was a Democrat, a Presbyterian, and a member of the Texas and the American bar associations. He died in Waco on January 6, 1922, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Lewis E. Daniell, Personnel of the Texas State Government, with Sketches of Representative Men of Texas (Austin: City Printing, 1887; 3d ed., San Antonio: Maverick, 1892). Betty A. M. McSwain, ed., The Bench and Bar of Waco and McLennan County (Waco: Texian Press, 1976). Waco Times-Herald, January 7, 1922. Who Was Who in America, Vol. 2.
