|
Senate Years of Service: 1915-1921 Party: Democrat
![](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20090103165331im_/http://bioguide.congress.gov/bioguide/photo/P/P000290.jpg) |
Library of Congress |
PHELAN, James Duval, a Senator from California; born in San Francisco, Calif., April 20, 1861; graduated
from St. Ignatius University, San Francisco, in 1881; studied law at the University of California at
Berkeley; engaged in banking; mayor of San Francisco 1897-1902; president of Relief and Red
Cross Funds after the San Francisco earthquake disaster 1906; elected as a Democrat to the United
States Senate and served from March 4, 1915, to March 3, 1921; unsuccessful candidate for
reelection in 1920; chairman, Committee on Railroads (Sixty-fourth Congress), Committee on
Irrigation and Reclamation of Arid Lands (Sixty-fifth Congress); traveled extensively in 1921 and
1922; chairman of the board of directors of the United Bank & Trust Co. at San Francisco; art
collector; died at his country estate Villa Montalvo, Saratoga, Santa Clara County, Calif., August 7,
1930; interment in the family mausoleum in Holy Cross Cemetery, San Mateo County, near San
Francisco, Calif.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography;
Hennings, Robert E. James D. Phelan and the Wilson Progressives of California.
New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1985; Walsh, James P. James Phelans Montalvo: Many
Accepted, One Declined. Southern California Quarterly 58 (Spring 1976):
95-112.
|