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Senate Years of Service: 1913-1925 Party: Republican
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STERLING, Thomas, (brother of John Allen Sterling),
a Senator from South Dakota; born near Amanda, Fairfield County, Ohio, February
21, 1851; moved with his parents to McLean County, Ill., in 1854; attended the public schools and
graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University at Bloomington in 1875; superintendent of schools of
Bement, Ill., 1875-1877; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1878 and commenced practice in
Springfield, Ill.; city prosecuting attorney 1880-1881; moved to the Territory of Dakota and located
in Northville, Spink County, in 1882; moved to Redfield in 1886 and continued the practice of law;
district attorney of Spink County, Dak., 1886-1888; member of the State constitutional convention in
1889; member, State senate 1890; dean of the college of law of the University of South Dakota at
Vermillion 1901-1911; elected in 1913 as a Republican to the United States Senate; reelected in
1918, and served from March 4, 1913, to March 3, 1925; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in
1924; chairman, Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment (Sixty-sixth Congress), Committee on
Civil Service (Sixty-seventh Congress), Committee on Post Office and Post Roads (Sixty-eighth
Congress); engaged in the practice of law in Washington, D.C., and also served on the faculty of
National University Law School; appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925 as field secretary of
the Commission for the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of George
Washington; died in Washington, D.C., August 26, 1930; interment in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
BibliographyPressler, Larry. Thomas Sterling. In U.S.
Senators from the Prairie. Vermillion, S.Dak.: Dakota Press, 1982, pp. 63-69; Tingley,
Ralph B. The Crowded Field: Eight Men for the Senate. South Dakota History 9
(Fall 1979): 316-36.
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