Atlee POMERENE, Congress, OH (1863-1937)

POMERENE, Atlee, a Senator from Ohio; born in Berlin, Holmes County, Ohio, December 6, 1863; attended the common schools and Vermillion Institute, Hayesville, Ohio; graduated from Princeton College in 1884 and from the Cincinnati Law School in 1886; admitted to the bar in 1886 and commenced practice in Canton, Ohio; city solicitor 1887-1891; prosecuting attorney of Stark County 1897-1900; Ohio tax commissioner 1906-1908; unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1908; elected lieutenant governor of Ohio in 1910 and served from January until April 1911, when he resigned to assume the duties of United States Senator; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1911; reelected in 1916 and served from March 4, 1911, to March 3, 1923; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922 and again in 1926; chairman, Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment (Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses), Committee on Privileges and Elections (Sixty-fifth Congress), Committee on Corporations Organized in the District of Columbia (Sixty-sixth Congress); moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1923 and resumed the practice of law; delegate representing the United States at the Fifth Pan American Congress in Chile in 1923; appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1924 as special counsel for the United States to prosecute the Teapot Dome oil fraud cases; unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 1928; appointed chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation by President Herbert Hoover 1932-1933; resumed the practice of law in Cleveland, Ohio, where he died on November 12, 1937; interment in West Lawn Cemetery, Canton, Ohio.

Bibliography

Dictionary of American Biography; American National Biography; Shriver, Philip Raymond. “The Making of a Moderate Progressive: Atlee Pomerene.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1954.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present