Carroll Sherman Chaplin (April 28, 1882 – August 9, 1953) was an American lawyer and politician in

Portland, Maine Portland is the largest city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metro ...

. Chaplin was born in Portland, Maine and attended public schools in Portland. He graduated from the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. It is classifi ...

in 1904 and from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

in 1908. He was admitted to the Maine bar in October 1908. A

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or again ...

, he served as

Mayor of Portland, Maine The Mayor of Portland is the official head of the city of Portland, Maine, United States, as stipulated in the Charter of the City of Portland. This article is a listing of past (and present) Mayors of Portland. History of the office Before 192 ...

from 1922 to 1923.

1923 special election

Chaplin opposed the Ku Klux Klan in the September 1923 special election which successfully sought to change Portland city government by eliminating the elected mayor position, partisan elections and elections by ward in favor of a five person at large city council with the day-to-day business of Portland government being led by an unelected city manager. The Klan's election over Chaplin and Jewish, Irish and African-American activists marked a major win for the KKK in the region. Chaplin had proposed a competing measure which had sought to bridge the demands of the KKK while retaining the directly elected mayor and bicameral council government but his plan finished with just 810 votes out of approximately 15,000 total.

Personal

Chaplin married Bessie L. Whittier in 1915. He was a Congregationalist. His parents were Ashbel Chaplin and Huldah M. (Peabody) Chaplin. He died at Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1953.

References

1882 births 1953 deaths Mayors of Portland, Maine Maine lawyers Maine Republicans University of Maine alumni Harvard Law School alumni 20th-century American lawyers {{Maine-mayor-stub