William Edgar BORAH, Congress, ID (1865-1940)

BORAH, William Edgar, a Senator from Idaho; born on a farm near Fairfield, Wayne County, Ill., June 29, 1865; attended the common schools of Wayne County and Southern Illinois Academy at Enfield; attended the University of Kansas at Lawrence until 1889; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1890 and commenced practice in Lyons, Kans.; moved to Boise, Idaho, in 1891 and practiced law; unsuccessful candidate on the Silver Republican ticket for election in 1896 to the Fifty-fifth Congress; unsuccessful candidate for nomination as United States Senator in 1903; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1907; reelected in 1913, 1918, 1924, 1930, and again in 1936, and served from March 4, 1907, until his death in Washington, D.C, on January 19, 1940; chairman, Committee on Education and Labor (Sixty-first, Sixty-second, Sixty-seventh, and Sixty-eighth Congresses), Committee on Indian Depredations (Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses), Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Justice (Sixty-fifth Congress), Committee on Interoceanic Canals (Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Congresses), Committee on Foreign Relations (Sixty-eighth through Seventy-second Congresses); unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1936; funeral services were held in the Chamber of the United States Senate; interment in Morris Hill Cemetery, Boise, Idaho.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law; Ashby, Leroy. The Spearless Leader, Senator Borah and the Progressive Movement in the 1920’s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972; McKenna, Marian C. Borah. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961.

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