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Senate Years of Service: 1941-1953 Party: Democrat
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McFARLAND, Ernest William, a Senator from Arizona; born on a farm near Earlsboro, Pottawatomie
County, Okla., October 9, 1894; attended the rural schools; graduated from East
Central State Teachers College, Ada, Okla., in 1914, and from the University
of Oklahoma at Norman in 1917; during the First World War served in the United
States Navy; after the war moved to Phoenix, Ariz., and was employed as a clerk
in a bank; graduated from the law department of Stanford (Calif.) University in
1921; admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Casa Grande, Pinal County,
Ariz.; assistant attorney general of Arizona 1923-1924, and county attorney of
Pinal County 1925-1930; moved to Florence, Ariz., in 1925; judge of the
superior court of Pinal County 1934-1940; elected as a Democrat to the United
States Senate in 1940; reelected in 1946 and served from January 3, 1941, to
January 3, 1953; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1952; majority leader
1951-1953; co-chairman, Joint Committee on Navaho-Hopi Indian Administration
(Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses); Governor of Arizona 1955-1959;
unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate in 1958;
resumed the practice of law; elected associate justice, Arizona supreme court,
in 1964, becoming chief justice in 1968, and serving until 1970; member,
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence 1968-1969;
director, Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco; president of Arizona
Television Company; died in Phoenix, Ariz., June 8, 1984; interment in
Greenwood Memorial Park, Phoenix, Ariz.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; McFarland, Ernest
W.
Mac: The Autobiography of Ernest W. McFarland. n.p., 1979;
McMillan, James E., ed.
The Ernest McFarland Papers: The United States Senate Years,
1940-1952. Prescott, Ariz.: Sharlot Hall Museum Press, 1995; McMillan,
James E.,
Ernest W. McFarland: Majority Leader of the United States Senate,
Governor and Chief Justice of the State of Arizona. Tucson: University
of Arizona Press, 2006.
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