Charles Elroy TOWNSEND, Congress, MI (1856-1924)

TOWNSEND, Charles Elroy, a Representative and a Senator from Michigan; born near Concord, Jackson County, Mich., August 15, 1856; attended the common schools in Concord and Jackson and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; taught school at Concord 1881-1886; register of deeds 1886-1897; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1895 and commenced the practice of his profession in Jackson, Mich.; elected as a Republican to the Fifty-eighth and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1903-March 3, 1911); elected to the United States Senate in 1910; reelected in 1916 and served from March 4, 1911, to March 3, 1923; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922; chairman, Committee on Coast and Insular Survey (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Expenditures in the War Department (Sixty-fifth Congress), Committee on Post Office and Post Roads (Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Congresses); appointed in 1923 as a member of the International Joint Commission created to regulate the use of the boundary waters between the United States and Canada, in which capacity he served until his death in Jackson, Mich., August 3, 1924; interment in Maple Grove Cemetery, Concord, Mich.

Bibliography

Schlup, Peonard. “Party Loyalist: Charles E. Townsend and the Vice-Presidential Election of 1912.” Research Journal of Philosophy & Social Sciences (1992): 61-70.

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