Gerrit J. Diekema

Gerrit J. Diekema

Gerrit John Diekema (born March 27, 1859 in Holland , Michigan , †  December 20, 1930 in The Hague , Netherlands ) was an American politician . Between 1908 and 1911 he represented the state of Michigan in the US House of Representatives . From 1929 he was the United States Ambassador to the Netherlands.

Career

Gerrit Diekema attended public schools in his home country including Hope College , which he graduated from in 1881. After studying law at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and being admitted to the bar in 1883, he began working in his new profession in his native Holland. Diekema also became the city's legal representative. At the same time he began a political career as a member of the Republican Party .

Between 1885 and 1891 he sat as a member of the House of Representatives from Michigan , whose president he was in 1889, succeeding Daniel P. Markey . In 1895 Diekema was elected Mayor of Holland. From 1900 and 1910 he was chairman of the Republican Party in Michigan . He was to exercise this function again between 1927 and 1929. In June 1896 Diekema was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in St. Louis , where William McKinley was nominated as a presidential candidate. Between 1901 and 1907 he was a member of a commission that discussed claims arising from the peace treaty after the Spanish-American War of 1898 .

After the resignation of Congressman William Alden Smith , Diekema was elected as his successor to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC , where he took up his new mandate on March 17, 1908, at the by-election for the fifth seat of Michigan . After being re-elected, he could remain in Congress until March 3, 1911 . In the congressional elections of 1910 Diekema was defeated by the Democrat Edwin F. Sweet . In the following years he practiced again as a lawyer in Holland. In 1912 he worked at the Republican Party headquarters in Chicago .

In 1916 he ran unsuccessfully in the gubernatorial elections ; In 1924 he was once again a delegate at the Federal Republican Party Congress, at which US President Calvin Coolidge was nominated for re-election. In August 1929 he was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands by President Herbert Hoover . He held this office as the successor to Richard M. Tobin until his death on December 20, 1930 in The Hague. He was buried in his hometown of Holland.

Web links

• Gerrit J. Diekema in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Gerrit J. Diekema in the database of Find a Grave (English)