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Senate Years of Service: 1890-1901 Party: Republican
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SHOUP, George Laird, (great-grandfather of Richard Gardner Shoup),
a Senator from Idaho; born in Kittanning, Armstrong County, Pa., June 15,
1836; attended the public schools of Freeport and Slate Lick; moved to Illinois in 1852;
engaged in agricultural pursuits and stock raising near Galesburg, Ill., until 1858; moved to
Colorado in 1859; engaged in mining and mercantile pursuits until 1861; during the Civil War
enlisted in an independent company of scouts and soon thereafter was commissioned a second
lieutenant; scouted throughout New Mexico and Colorado and on the Canadian, Pecos, Arkansas
and Red Rivers; promoted to first lieutenant; given leave of absence to attend the convention to
prepare a constitution for the proposed State of Colorado in 1864; returned to active duty,
commissioned colonel, and mustered out in Denver in 1864; engaged in mercantile pursuits in
Virginia City, Mont., in 1866 and later in Salmon City, Idaho; Lemhi county treasurer and
superintendent of schools; member, Territorial house of representatives 1874; member,
Territorial council 1878; member of the Republican National Committee 1880-1884,
1888-1892; United States commissioner for Idaho at the Worlds Cotton Centennial Exposition
in New Orleans, La., in 1884 and 1885; Governor of Idaho Territory 1889-1890; upon the
admission of Idaho as a State into the Union was elected its first Governor, October 1, 1890, but
resigned in December of that year, having been elected Senator; elected as a Republican to the
United States Senate in 1890; reelected in 1895 and served from December 18, 1890, to March
3, 1901; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1900; chairman, Committee on Education and
Labor (Fifty-fourth Congress), Committee on Territories (Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Congresses);
died in Boise, Idaho, December 21, 1904; interment in the Masonic Cemetery.
Bibliography American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Crowder, David L. Pioneer Sketch: George
Laird Shoup. Idaho Yesterdays 33 (Winter 1990): 2-8; U.S. Congress.
Memorial Addresses at Erection of Statue. 61st Cong., 2nd sess., 1909-1910.
Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910.
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