Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives, Photography Collection

ABERNETHY, Thomas Gerstle, a Representative from Mississippi; born in Eupora, Webster County, Miss., May 16, 1903; attended the public schools, the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the University of Mississippi at Oxford, and was graduated from the law department of Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn., in 1924; was admitted to the bar in 1924 and commenced practice in Eupora, Miss., in 1925; mayor of Eupora 1927-1929; moved to Okolona, Miss, in 1929 and continued the practice of law; district attorney of the third judicial district of Mississippi 1936-1942; delegate, Democratic National Conventions in 1956 and 1960; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-eighth and to the fourteen succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1943-January 3, 1973); chairman, Committee on Elections No. 1 (Seventy-eighth Congress); was not a candidate for reelection in 1972 to the Ninety-third Congress; died in Jackson, Miss., on June 11, 1998.