William Howard Thompson (October 14, 1871February 9, 1928) was a

United States senator The United States Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States House of Representatives, House of Representatives being the Lower house, lower chamber. Together they compose the national Bica ...

from

Kansas Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...

Biography

Born in

Crawfordsville, Indiana Crawfordsville is a city in Montgomery County in west central Indiana, United States, west by northwest of Indianapolis. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 16,306. The city is the county seat of Montgomery County, the only cha ...

, he moved with his parents to

Nemaha County, Kansas Nemaha County (standard abbreviation: NM) is a county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 10,273. The county seat is Seneca. History Early history For many millennia ...

in 1880, where attended the public schools and graduated from the Seneca

Normal School A normal school or normal college is an institution created to Teacher education, train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high s ...

in 1886. He graduated from the Lawrence Business College in 1891. He was the official

court reporter A court reporter, court stenographer, or shorthand reporter is a person whose occupation is to capture the live testimony in proceedings using a stenographic machine, thereby transforming the proceedings into an official certified transcript b ...

of the twenty-second judicial district of Kansas from 1891 to 1894, and studied law; he was admitted to the

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in 1894, commencing practice in Seneca; he was clerk of the

Kansas Court of Appeals The Kansas Court of Appeals is the intermediate-level appellate court for the U.S. state of Kansas. History The Kansas Legislature created the first Kansas Court of Appeals in 1895, to help the Kansas Supreme Court with an increasingly heavy casel ...

Topeka Topeka ( ; Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central Un ...

and practiced law there from 1897 to 1901. He moved to

Iola, Kansas Iola () is the county seat of Allen County, Kansas, United States. The city is situated along the Neosho River in southeast Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 5,396. It is named in honor of Iola Colborn. History ...

in 1901 and continued the practice of law. He was county attorney of Allen County and moved to Garden City in 1905. From 1906 to 1913 he was judge of the thirty-second judicial district of Kansas. In 1912, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and resigned his judgeship in 1913; he served from March 4, 1913, to March 3, 1919, and was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1918. He was defeated by 30 percentage points, the largest loss ever by a sitting U.S. senator not running as a third-party candidate

While in the Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the United States Department of Commerce, Departments of Commerce and

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(Sixty-third Congress) and a member of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Commerce (Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth Congresses) and the to Audit and Control the Contingent Expenses (Sixty-fifth Congress). Thompson resumed the practice of law at

Kansas City, Kansas Kansas City, abbreviated as "KCK", is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas, and the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is an inner suburb of the older and more populous Kansas City, Missouri, after which it is named. As of ...

in 1919 and moved to

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

in 1923, and practiced law in Kansas City and Tulsa. He moved to

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, in 1927, where he continued the practice of law, and died there in 1928, aged 56. He was interred temporarily in Glenwood cemetery in Washington, DC; in May 1928 his remains were transferred to Mount Hope cemetery in Topeka, Kansas.

Electoral history

Senator of Kansas

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, William Howard 1871 births 1928 deaths People from Crawfordsville, Indiana Democratic Party United States senators from Kansas Kansas Democrats Kansas state court judges People from Kansas City, Kansas Politicians from Topeka, Kansas People from Nemaha County, Kansas