Joseph Little BRISTOW, Congress, KS (1861-1944)

BRISTOW, Joseph Little, a Senator from Kansas; born near Hazel Green, Wolf County, Ky., July 22, 1861; moved with his father to Fredonia, Kans., in 1873; attended the country schools, and graduated from Baker University, Baldwin, Kans., in 1886; clerk of the district court of Douglas County 1886-1890; in 1890 bought the Salina (Kans.) Daily Republican, which he edited for five years; elected secretary of the Republican State committee in 1894; private secretary to the Governor 1895-1897; purchased the Ottawa (Kans.) Herald, which he owned for more than ten years; again elected secretary of the Republican State committee in 1898; Fourth Assistant Postmaster General 1897-1905; purchased the Salina Daily Republican-Journal in 1903; appointed a special commissioner of the Panama Railroad in 1905; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1909, to March 3, 1915; was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1914; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Post Office Department (Sixty-first and Sixty-second Congresses), Committee on Cuban Relations (Sixty-third Congress); temporarily engaged in agricultural pursuits with his son near Fairfax, Va.; chairman of the Kansas Utilities Commission 1915-1918; engaged in agricultural pursuits on his estate, “Ossian Hall,” near Fairfax, Va., from 1918 until his death there July 14, 1944; interment in Gypsum Hill Cemetery, Salina, Kans.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Sageser, A. Bower. Joseph L. Bristow: Kansas Progressive. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1968; Bristow, Joseph Little. Fraud and Politics at the Turn of the Century. Edited by Joseph Q. Bristow and Frank B. Bristow. New York: Exposition Press, 1952.

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