Three of the five were transplants from the east coast: Hiram F. Stevens, Clarence Halbert, and Ambrose Tighe. Stevens, a Vermont native, had read law with New York Court of Appeals Judge John K. Porter and graduated from Columbia Law School. When former Justice William Mitchell of the Minnesota Supreme Court died before assuming the deanship, Stevens took his place. Halbert came from New York, having graduated from Yale Law School. Tighe, also from New York, earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Yale, where he was a member of the college's Skull and Bones society. The other two founders, Thomas O'Brien and Moses Clapp, came from Minnesota and Indiana. O'Brien read law in St. Paul and later served as a justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Clapp graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School, served three terms as Minnesota Attorney General, and later represented Minnesota in the United States Senate.