Robert B. Oxtoby was born in 1921. His full name, Robert Boynton Oxtoby, appears in a published obituary of his wife, Carolyn Oxtoby.
His youth was shaped by the Great Depression and the Second World War, and his professional training took place in the years immediately after the war, when American law schools were enrolling returning students and new graduates.
Oxtoby studied at Carleton College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1866 in Northfield, Minnesota, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree. Carleton's tradition emphasized broad undergraduate study across the humanities and sciences before professional training.
He then attended the Northwestern University School of Law and received the Juris Doctor degree. Northwestern was founded in 1851 in Evanston, Illinois, and its law school operated in Chicago, where its 1940s course announcements listed Levy Mayer Hall as the home of the School of Law.
At Northwestern he became acquainted with Abram Dubois Van Meter, who graduated from the law school in 1948. Van Meter's obituary describes Oxtoby as his law school seat-mate and close friend, and the two later practiced law together in Springfield.
Oxtoby was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1949 and began practicing law in Springfield, the state capital of Illinois. He practiced with Abram Dubois Van Meter, his law school classmate, in a firm first known as Van Meter and Oxtoby and later as Van Meter, Oxtoby and Funk. Van Meter's obituary dates the practice under these names from 1949 to 2001.
Illinois lawyers are admitted and regulated under the authority of the Illinois Supreme Court, and the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission administers attorney discipline in the state. In 1988 Oxtoby appeared as counsel for a respondent in an Illinois Supreme Court proceeding brought by the Administrator of that commission. The court's decision in In re Owens was filed on December 6, 1988.
Oxtoby married Carolyn Oxtoby in 1956, after she returned to Springfield from her studies at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Carolyn Oxtoby became a leader in historic preservation in downtown Springfield, helped found the Springfield Heritage Foundation, and organized efforts to save Chatterton Place and the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices. She credited her husband's legal and financial knowledge with helping her learn the basics of real estate development.
Robert Oxtoby died before his wife, who died in January 2024 at the age of 92.
Born in Springfield, Illinois, she attended Mount Holyoke College and became a leading advocate for downtown Springfield preservation.
Northwestern University law school classmate and partner in the Springfield law practice from 1949. He later served as vice president, president, and chairman of the Illinois National Bank of Springfield.
