Thomas Benton CATRON, Congress, NM (1840-1921)

CATRON, Thomas Benton, a Delegate and a Senator from New Mexico; born near Lexington, Lafayette County, Mo., October 6, 1840; attended the common schools, and was graduated from the University of Missouri at Columbia in 1860; served four years in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; moved to New Mexico in 1866; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1867 and commenced practice in Las Cruces, N.Mex.; district attorney of the third district 1866-1868; in 1869 was appointed attorney general of the Territory; resigned to take the position of United States attorney, to which he had been appointed by President Ulysses Grant; member, Territorial council 1884, 1888, 1890, 1899, 1905, and 1909; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1892 to Congress; elected as a Republican Delegate to the Fifty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1895-March 3, 1897); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1896; resumed the practice of law in Santa Fe, N.Mex.; upon the admission of New Mexico as a State into the Union was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 27, 1912, to March 3, 1917; was not a candidate for renomination in 1916; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Interior Department (Sixty-second Congress); retired to Santa Fe, N.Mex., where he died on May 15, 1921; interment in Fairview Cemetery.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Duran, Tobias. ‘Francisco Chavez, Thomas B. Catron, and Organized Political Violence in Santa Fe in the 1890s.’ New Mexico Historical Review 59 (July 1984): 291-310; Westphall, Victor. Thomas Benton Catron and His Era. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973.

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