William La Follette
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William Leroy La Follette (November 30, 1860 - December 20, 1934) was a member of the United States House of Representatives representing Washington. He represented the 3rd District from 1911 to 1915, and the 4th District from 1915 to 1919.
La Follette was born in Thorntown, Boone County, Indiana. He attended the public schools in Thorntown, and at the same time clerked in a store and was employed in the jewelry trade. At the age of sixteen he headed west to the Washington Territories and took up farming in Whitman County, an area in the Palouse that had been off limits to settlers since the Indian Wars of the 1850's. Too young to qualify for land under the Homestead Act, he returned to Indiana where he took some business courses at Indiana Central Normal College. He returned to the Palouse after these studies, staked his claim and began farming. He engaged in agricultural pursuits(mainly wheat), stock raising, and fruit growing.Later, he was extensively engaged as an orchardist at Wawawai, Washington, having purchased some 375 acreas from his father-in-law, John Tabor (one of the founders of Whitman County) who had been among the first settlers to bring apples to the region.
La Follette was a member of the World’s Fair Commission and had charge of the Washington State building at the Chicago Exposition in 1893. He served as a member of the State House of Representatives from 1899 to 1901. He also served on the School Board and was an active member of the Grange. In 1905, he sold his fruit interests and moved to Pullman, Washington. He was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-second and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1911 to March 3, 1919). He was active on the House Committee on Public Lands and engaged deeply in land use and water issues. In 1918 he ran unsuccessfully for renomination in the Republican primary.
La Follette resided in Spokane, Washington from 1920 to 1923 and in Princess Anne, Maryland from 1924 to 1925. He moved to Colfax, Washington in 1927 and resumed his former business activities.
William La Follette's son, William Leroy (Roy) LaFollette Jr., served for many years as Prosecuting Attorney for Whitman County (1922-1930 and again during World War II). He successfully ran for his father's old seat in the Washington State Legislature in 1939, but was defeated in 1942 in a bid for Congress. One of his daughters, Suzanne La Follette, became a noted libertarian journalist. She helped to found The Freeman and National Review magazines. Another son, Chester La Follette, was a painter whose portrait of his father's first cousin, U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr. of Wisconsin, hangs in the United States Capitol.
William La Follette, Sr.'s brother, Harvey Marion LaFollette, served as Superintendent of Schools in Indiana before moving to Tennessee, where he founded the city of LaFollette, Tennessee.[1]
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[edit] External links
- William La Follette at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- William La Follette at Find a Grave
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
