Preceded by David I. Walsh Preceded by Elijah A. Morse Succeeded by Nicholas Longworth Party Republican Party | Preceded by Champ Clark Role Former U.S. Senator Succeeded by Marcus A. Coolidge Name Frederick Gillett Books George Frisbie Hoar | |
 | ||
President Woodrow Wilson
Warren Harding
Calvin Coolidge Died July 31, 1935, Springfield, Massachusetts, United States Spouse Christine Rice Hoar (m. 1915) Education Amherst College, Harvard Law School | ||
Previous office Senator (MA) 1925–1931 | ||
Frederick Huntington Gillett (; October 16, 1851 – July 31, 1935) was an American politician who served in the Massachusetts state government and both houses of the U.S. Congress between 1879 and 1931, including six years as Speaker of the House.
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Early life
Frederick H. Gillett was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, to Edward Bates Gillett (1817–1899) and Lucy Fowler Gillett (1830–1916). He graduated from Amherst College, where he was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, in 1874 and Harvard Law School in 1877. He entered the practice of law in Springfield in 1877.
Career
Gillett was the Assistant Attorney General of Massachusetts from 1879 to 1882. For two one-year terms he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was elected to the Fifty-third United States Congress in 1892.
A Republican, Gillett served in the United States House of Representatives from 1893 to 1925. On January 24, 1914, he introduced legislation to initiate the adoption of an Anti-Polygamy Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In 1919, the Republican caucus elected him Speaker of the United States House of Representatives on the first ballot. He represented a contrast to the earlier, assertive leadership style of Joe Cannon, the Speaker when the Republicans lost control of the House in the 1910 election. Gillett was expected to exercise less control than his predecessor, since he was characterized by one reporter as someone who did not drink coffee in the morning "for fear it would keep him awake all day". He continued as Speaker for six years, the remainder of his time in the House. He decided to run for the United States Senate in 1924. He won the Republican primary easily over two other candidates and then narrowly defeated incumbent Senator David I. Walsh in the Republican landslide of November 1924 led by President Calvin Coolidge, a former governor of Massachusetts. Time magazine chose him for its November 17, 1924, cover. He served one term in the Senate from 1925 to 1931, and decided not to seek re-election in the face of a difficult primary challenge. In June 1930, he declined to state his position on prohibition or its repeal when queried by prohibition advocates.
Personal life
On November 25, 1915, Gillett married Christine Rice Hoar, the widow of his former colleague in Congress, Rockwood Hoar. In 1934 he published a biography of George Frisbie Hoar, an earlier congressman and senator from Massachusetts, his wife's father-in-law from her previous marriage.
During his time in Washington, Gillett spent his free time driving his 1926 Pontiac Coupe and playing golf in the morning. In retirement he wintered in Pasadena, California. He died in a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, on July 31, 1935.
Legacy
As of 2013, Gillett is the last U.S. senator from Massachusetts to come from the state's four westernmost counties and the last Speaker of the House to serve in the U.S. Senate. He was the longest-tenured former congressman to have ever been elected to the Senate until June 2013, when Representative Ed Markey was elected to the same Senate seat that Gillett held, in a special election to fill the seat following the resignation of John Kerry to become U.S. Secretary of State. Gillett was the last Speaker of the House to sport a beard until Paul Ryan in 2015.