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Senate Years of Service: 1923-1947 Party: Democrat
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WHEELER, Burton Kendall, a Senator from Montana; born in Hudson, Middlesex County, Mass., February 27,
1882; attended the common schools; worked as a stenographer in Boston, Mass.; graduated from
the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1905; admitted to the bar the same
year and commenced practice in Butte, Silver Bow County, Mont.; member, State house of
representatives 1910-1912; United States district attorney for Montana 1913-1918; resumed the
practice of law in Butte; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor of Montana in 1920;
elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1922 for the term ending March 3, 1929;
unsuccessful candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1924 on the Progressive Party ticket;
reelected to the United States Senate in 1928, 1934 and 1940 and served from March 4, 1923, to
January 3, 1947; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1946; chairman, Committee on Indian
Affairs (Seventy-third Congress), Committee on Interstate Commerce (Seventy-fourth through
Seventy-ninth Congresses); resumed the practice of law; died in Washington, D.C., January 6, 1975;
interment in Rock Creek Cemetery.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Anderson, John Thomas. Senator Burton K. Wheeler
and United States Foreign Relations. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1982; Wheeler,
Burton Kendall. Yankee From the West: The Candid, Turbulent Life Story of the
Yankee-Born U.S. Senator from Montana. 1962. Reprint. New York: Octagon Books,
1977.
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