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Oil on canvas, Howard Chandler Christy, 1935, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives |
RAINEY, Henry Thomas, a Representative from Illinois; born in Carrollton, Greene County,
Ill., on August 20, 1860; attended the public schools and Knox Academy and Knox
College, Galesburg, Ill.; was graduated from Amherst (Mass.) College in 1883
and from the Union College of Law, Chicago, Ill., in 1885; was admitted to the
bar in 1885 and commenced practice in Carrollton, Ill.; master in chancery for
Greene County, Ill., from 1887 to 1895, when he resigned; elected as a Democrat
to the Fifty-eighth and to the eight succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1903-March
3, 1921); unsuccessfully contested the election of Guy L. Shaw to the
Sixty-seventh Congress; engaged in agricultural pursuits; elected to the
Sixty-eighth and to the five succeeding Congresses and served from March 4,
1923, until his death; majority leader (Seventy-second Congress), Speaker of
the House of Representatives (Seventy-third Congress); died in St. Louis, Mo.,
on August 19, 1934; interment in the Carrollton Cemetery, Carrollton, Ill.
BibliographyWaller, Robert A.
Rainey of Illinois: A Political Biography, 1903-34. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1977; Waller, Robert A. The Selection of Henry
T. Rainey as Speaker of the House.
Capital Studies 2 (Spring 1973): 37-47.
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