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Steel engraving (detail), Twenty Years of Congress, 1886, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives |
LYNCH, John Roy, a Representative from Mississippi; born near Vidalia, Concordia
Parish, La., September 10, 1847; after his fathers death moved with his mother
to Natchez, Miss., in 1863, where they were held as slaves; after emancipation
engaged in photography and attended evening school; appointed by Governor Ames
as a justice of the peace in 1869; member of the State house of representatives
1869-1873 and served the last term as speaker; delegate to the Republican
National Conventions in 1872, 1884, 1888, 1892, and 1900; elected as a
Republican to the Forty-third and Forty-fourth Congresses (March 4, 1873-March
3, 1877); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1876 to the Forty-fifth
Congress; successfully contested the election of James R. Chalmers to the
Forty-seventh Congress and served from April 29, 1882, to March 3, 1883;
unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1882 to the Forty-eighth Congress;
returned to his plantation in Adams County, Miss., and engaged in agricultural
pursuits; chairman of the Republican State executive committee 1881-1889;
member of the Republican National Committee for the State of Mississippi
1884-1889; temporary chairman of the Republican National Convention at Chicago
in 1884; Fourth Auditor of the Treasury for the Navy Department under President
Harrison 1889-1893; studied law; was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1896;
returned to Washington, D.C., in 1897, where he practiced his profession until
1898, when he was appointed a major and additional paymaster of Volunteers
during the Spanish-American War by President William McKinley; was appointed by
President McKinley as a paymaster in the Regular Army with the rank of captain
in 1901; was promoted to major in 1906; retired from the Regular Army in 1911;
moved to Chicago, Ill., in 1912 and continued the practice of his profession
until his death in that city on November 2, 1939; interment in Arlington
National Cemetery.
BibliographyJohn Roy Lynch in
Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007. Prepared under the
direction of the Committee on House Administration by the Office of History
& Preservation, U. S. House of Representatives. Washington: Government
Printing Office, 2008; Lynch, John Roy.
Reminiscences of an Active Life. Edited by John Hope Franklin.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Reprint Edition, Jackson, MS:
University Press of Mississippi, 2008.
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