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Senate Years of Service: 1879-1905 Party: Republican
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Library of Congress
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PLATT, Orville Hitchcock, a Senator from Connecticut; born in Washington, Litchfield County, Conn., July 19,
1827; attended the common schools and graduated from the Gunnery Academy, Washington, Conn.;
studied law in Litchfield, Conn.; admitted to the bar in 1850 and commenced practice in Towanda,
Pa.; moved to Meriden, Conn., in 1850 and continued to practice law; clerk of the State senate
1855-1856; secretary of State of Connecticut 1857; member, State senate 1861-1862; member,
State house of representatives in 1864, 1869, and served as speaker in the latter year; States attorney
for New Haven County 1877-1879; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1879;
reelected in 1885, 1891, 1897 and 1903 and served from March 4, 1879, until his death; chairman,
Committee on Patents (Forty-seventh through Forty-ninth and Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Congresses),
Committee on Pensions (Forty-seventh Congress), Committee on Territories (Fiftieth through
Fifty-second Congresses), Committee on Cuban Relations (Fifty-sixth through Fifty-eighth
Congresses), Committee on the Judiciary (Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Congresses); died in Meriden,
Conn., April 21, 1905; interment in Washington (Conn.) Cemetery on the Green.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Coolidge, Louis. An Old Fashioned Senator:
Orville H. Platt. 1910. Reprint. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1971; Smith, Edwina C.
Conservatism in the Gilded Age: The Senatorial Career of Orville H. Platt. Ph.D. dissertation,
University of North Carolina, 1976.
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