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Senate Years of Service: 1913-1941 Party: Democrat
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| Oil on canvas, B. Godwin, 1939, Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives |
SHEPPARD, Morris, (son of John Levi Sheppard, grandfather of Connie Mack III, and great-grandfather of Connie Mack IV),
a Representative and a Senator from Texas; born in Wheatville,
Morris County, Tex., May 28, 1875; attended the common schools of various Texas
towns; graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1895, from the law
department of the same university in 1897, and from the law department of Yale
University in 1898; admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Pittsburg,
Camp County, Tex., in 1898; moved to Texarkana in 1899 and continued the
practice of his profession; elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-seventh Congress
to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his father, John L. Sheppard;
reelected to the Fifty-eighth and to the four succeeding Congresses and served
from November 15, 1902, to February 3, 1913, when he resigned; chairman,
Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds (Sixty-second Congress); elected as a
Democrat to the United States Senate on January 29, 1913, to fill the vacancy
in the term ending March 3, 1913, caused by the resignation of Joseph W.
Bailey, and on the same day was also elected for the term commencing March 4,
1913; reelected in 1918, 1924, 1930 and 1936; took the oath of office on
February 3, 1913, and served until his death; Democratic whip 1929-1933;
chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Agriculture
(Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses), Committee on the Census
(Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Revolutionary Claims
(Sixty-sixth Congress), Committee on Military Affairs (Seventy-third through
Seventy-seventh Congresses); died in Washington, D.C., April 9, 1941; interment
in Hillcrest Cemetery, Texarkana, Tex.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Bailey, Richard.
Morris Sheppard. In
Profiles in Power: Twentieth-Century Texans in Washington,
Edited by Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr., and Michael L. Collins. Arlington
Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1993; Duke, Escal F. Political Career of Morris
Sheppard, 1875-1941. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1958.
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