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Senate Years of Service: 1912-1917 Party: Republican
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Library of Congress |
CATRON, Thomas Benton, a Delegate and a Senator from New Mexico; born near Lexington, Lafayette
County, Mo., October 6, 1840; attended the common schools, and was graduated from the
University of Missouri at Columbia in 1860; served four years in the Confederate Army during the
Civil War; moved to New Mexico in 1866; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1867 and
commenced practice in Las Cruces, N.Mex.; district attorney of the third district 1866-1868; in 1869
was appointed attorney general of the Territory; resigned to take the position of United States
attorney, to which he had been appointed by President Ulysses Grant; member, Territorial council
1884, 1888, 1890, 1899, 1905, and 1909; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1892 to Congress;
elected as a Republican Delegate to the Fifty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1895-March 3, 1897);
unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1896; resumed the practice of law in Santa Fe, N.Mex.; upon
the admission of New Mexico as a State into the Union was elected as a Republican to the United
States Senate and served from March 27, 1912, to March 3, 1917; was not a candidate for
renomination in 1916; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Interior Department (Sixty-second
Congress); retired to Santa Fe, N.Mex., where he died on May 15, 1921; interment in Fairview
Cemetery.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Duran,
Tobias. Francisco Chavez, Thomas B. Catron, and Organized Political Violence in Santa Fe in the
1890s. New Mexico Historical Review 59 (July 1984): 291-310; Westphall, Victor. Thomas Benton Catron and His Era. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973.
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