(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – Congressman Dennis Moore (Third District -- Kansas) will hold a ceremony on Thursday, May 20th at 9:30 a.m., to mark the replanting of a tree on the east lawn of the U.S. Capitol memorializing the late Representative Joseph Taggart of Kansas City, Kansas. Construction of a U.S. Capitol visitors’ center necessitated the removal of the 85-year-old pin oak, which had been in declining health.

“I’m proud a Kansan who has been too long forgotten will once again be represented among the 99 memorial trees on the lawn of the Capitol,” Moore said. “The new pin oak will serve as a fitting memorial to a notable Kansan.”

Representative Taggart won a special election to the U.S. House in 1911 and was twice re-elected in 1912 and 1914. Having previously served as a prosecuting attorney in Wyandotte County, following his defeat for re-election he served as captain in the Quartermaster Corps of the United States Army during the First World War and later resumed the private practice of law.

Taggart and his wife and children planted the original pin oak in approximately 1916. It was one of five memorial trees around the Capitol lost when the area was leveled to construct the Capitol visitors’ center. None of the trees would have withstood replanting.

WHO: Congressman Dennis Moore

Congressman Jerry Moran

Matthew Evans, Senior Landscape Architect and Horticulturist for the Architect of the Capitol

Heather Wingate, President of the Kansas Society of Washington, D.C.

WHEN: Thursday, May 20th

9:30 a.m.

WHERE: East Capitol grounds close to Independence Avenue, Southeast