Biography
a Senator from Minnesota; born in Henderson, Jefferson County, N.Y., June 16, 1838; moved with his parents to Waukesha, Wis.; attended the public schools, Carroll College in Waukesha; graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1857; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1859 and commenced practice in Waukesha; during the Civil War served as first lieutenant in the Twenty-eighth Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, in 1861 and 1862; assistant adjutant general 1862-1864; moved to St. Paul, Minn., in 1865; member, State house of representatives 1867; United States district attorney 1868-1873; Governor of Minnesota 1874-1875; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1886; reelected in 1892 and again in 1898, and served from March 4, 1887, until his death on November 27, 1900; chairman, Committee on Pensions (Fiftieth through Fifty-second Congresses), Committee on Territories (Fifty-fourth Congress), Committee on Foreign Relations (Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Congresses); member of the commission which met in Paris, France, in September 1898 to arrange terms of peace after the war between the United States and Spain; died in St. Paul, Minn.; interment in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.
Courtesy of Biographical Directory of the United States Congress