Olin DeWitt Talmadge JOHNSTON, Congress, SC (1896-1965)

JOHNSTON, Olin DeWitt Talmadge, (father of Elizabeth J. Patterson), a Senator from South Carolina; born near Honea Path, Anderson County, S.C., November 18, 1896; attended the public schools; graduated from Textile Industrial Institute, Spartanburg, S.C., in 1915; attended Wofford College, Spartanburg, S.C., until 1917 when he enlisted in the United States Army, serving eighteen months overseas, and becoming a sergeant; reentered Wofford College and graduated in 1921; received a graduate degree from the University of South Carolina at Columbia in 1923 and graduated from that university’s law department in 1924; admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Spartanburg, S.C.; member, State house of representatives 1923-1924, 1927-1930; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for gubernatorial nomination in 1930; Governor of South Carolina 1935-1939, and from 1943 until his resignation on January 3, 1945; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in 1938 and 1941; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1944, 1950, 1956, and again in 1962, and served from January 3, 1945, until his death in Columbia, S.C., April 18, 1965; chairman, Committee on Post Office and Civil Service (Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses, and Eighty-fourth through Eighty-ninth Congresses), co-chairman, Joint Committee on Postal Service (Eighty-second Congress); interment in Barkers Creek Baptist Church Cemetery, Honea Path, S.C.

Bibliography

Dictionary of American Biography; Huss, John. Senator for the South: A Biography of Olin D. Johnston. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961.

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