William Wirt HASTINGS, Congress, OK (1866-1938)

HASTINGS, William Wirt, a Representative from Oklahoma; born on a farm in Benton County, Ark., near the Indian Territory boundary, December 31, 1866; moved with his parents to a farm at Beatties Prairie, Delaware County (then part of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory), Okla., and attended the Cherokee tribal school; was graduated from Cherokee Male Seminary, at Tahlequah, in 1884; teacher in the Cherokee tribal schools 1884-1886 and 1889-1891; was graduated from the law department of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., in 1889; was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Tahlequah, Okla.; attorney general for the Cherokee Nation 1891-1895; national attorney for the Cherokee tribe 1907-1914; delegate to the Democratic State convention in 1912; delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1912; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-fourth, Sixty-fifth, and Sixty-sixth Congresses (March 4, 1915-March 3, 1921); chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Department of the Interior (Sixty-fifth Congress); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1920 to the Sixty-seventh Congress; elected to the Sixty-eighth and to the five succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1923-January 3, 1935); was not a candidate for renomination in 1934; resumed the practice of law in Tahlequah, Okla.; commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 22, 1936, as chief of the Cherokees for one day to sign certain papers; died April 8, 1938, in Muskogee, Okla.; interment in City Cemetery, Tahlequah, Okla.

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