Francis Griffith NEWLANDS, Congress, NV (1846-1917)

NEWLANDS, Francis Griffith, (son-in-law of William Sharon), a Representative and a Senator from Nevada; born in Natchez, Adams County, Miss., August 28, 1846; moved to Missouri and later Illinois with his parents, who settled in Quincy, Illinois; privately tutored; as a young adult moved to Washington, D.C. with widowed mother; attended Yale College and the Columbian College Law School (now George Washington University), Washington, D.C.; admitted to the bar in 1869; moved to San Francisco in 1870 and practiced law; moved to Nevada in 1888 and continued the practice of law; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-third and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1893-March 3, 1903); did not seek renomination in 1902, having become a candidate for Senator; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1902; reelected in 1908 and again in 1914 and served from March 4, 1903, until his death; chairman, Committee on Corporations Organized in the District of Columbia (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Revolutionary Claims (Sixty-second Congress), Committee on Interstate Commerce (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses); died in Washington, D.C., December 24, 1917; interment in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Lilley, William, III. “The Early Career of Francis G. Newlands, 1848-1897.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1965; Rowley, William D. Reclaiming the Arid West: The Career of Francis G. Newlands. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996.

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