George R. Latham

George R. Latham

George Robert Latham (born March 9, 1832 in Haymarket , Prince William County , Virginia , †  December 16, 1917 in Buckhannon , West Virginia ) was an American politician . Between 1865 and 1867 he represented the second constituency of the state of West Virginia in the US House of Representatives .

Career

George Latham attended public schools in his home country. After a subsequent law degree and his admission as a lawyer in 1859, he began in Grafton in what is now West Virginia, which was then still part of Virginia, to practice in his new profession. In 1861 he was a delegate to a conference in Wheeling that set the course for the secession of what would later become the state of West Virginia from Virginia. During the Civil War , Latham was an officer in the Union Army . He rose to the position of colonel in a volunteer infantry unit.

In the congressional elections of 1864 he was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC as a candidate for the National Union Party in the second district of West Virginia . There he took over from William Gay Brown on March 4, 1865 . Since he refused to run again in 1866, he was only able to serve one term in Congress until March 3, 1867 , which was overshadowed by the quarrels between the radical Republicans and President Andrew Johnson .

Between 1867 and 1870 Latham was the American consul in Melbourne ( Australia ). From 1875 to 1877 he served as a school council in Upshur County ; he also served as the Supervisor of Census for the State Department of Statistics in West Virginia 's First Statistical District. Latham was also engaged in agricultural affairs in the 1870s. Politically, he no longer appeared. He died in Buckhannon in December 1917 and was buried there.

Web links

• George R. Latham in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• George R. Latham in the database of Find a Grave (English)