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Senate Years of Service: 1916-1921 Party: Democrat
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Library of Congress
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KIRBY, William Fosgate, a Senator from Arkansas; born near Texarkana, Miller County, Ark., November
16, 1867; attended the common schools; studied law at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn., and
graduated in 1885; admitted to the bar in 1885 and commenced practice in Texarkana, Ark.;
member, State house of representatives 1893, 1897; member, State senate 1899-1901; author of
Kirbys Digest of the Statutes of Arkansas in 1904; moved to Little Rock in 1907; attorney general
of Arkansas 1907-1909; elected associate justice of the supreme court of Arkansas 1910-1916,
when he resigned, having been elected on November 7, 1916, as a Democrat to the United States
Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of James P. Clarke; served from November 8, 1916, to
March 3, 1921; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1920 and again in 1932; chairman,
Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Agriculture (Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth Congresses),
Committee on Patents (Sixty-fifth Congress); resumed the practice of law; an associate justice of the
supreme court of Arkansas from 1926 until his death in Little Rock, Ark., July 26, 1934; interment in
State Line Cemetery, Texarkana, Ark.
BibliographyNiswonger, Richard L. William F. Kirby, Arkansass
Maverick Senator." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 37 (Autumn 1978): 252-63.
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