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VINSON, Frederick Moore, a Representative from Kentucky; born in Louisa, Lawrence County,
Ky., January 22, 1890; attended the public schools; graduated from the law
department of Centre College, Danville, Ky., 1911; was admitted to the bar the
same year and commenced practice in Louisa; city attorney of Louisa in 1914 and
1915; lawyer, private practice; United States Army, First World War, 1917-1919;
Commonwealth attorney for the thirty-second judicial district of Kentucky
1921-1924; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth Congress by special
election, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of United States
Representative William J. Fields, and reelected to the two succeeding
Congresses (January 24, 1924-March 3, 1929); unsuccessful candidate for
reelection to the Seventy-first Congress in 1928; resumed the practice of law
in Kentucky; elected as Democrat to the Seventy-second and to the three
succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1931-May 12, 1938); appointed by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt an associate justice of the United States Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1938 and subsequently designated by
Chief Justice Stone on March 2, 1942, as chief judge of the United States
Emergency Court of Appeals; served in each capacity until his resignation May
27, 1943, to become Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, in which
capacity he served until March 5, 1945; Federal Loan Administrator from March 6
to April 3, 1945; director of War Mobilization and Reconversion from April 4 to
July 22, 1945; appointed Secretary of the Treasury by President Harry S. Truman
and served from July 23, 1945, to June 23, 1946; appointed and took the oath of
office as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court on June 24, 1946,
and served until his death in Washington, D.C., September 8, 1953; interment in
Pinehill Cemetery, Louisa, Ky.
BibliographyBolner, James. Fred M. Vinson: 1890-1938, The Years of Relative
Obscurity.
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 63 (January 1965):
3-16; Hatcher, John H. Fred Vinson: Congressman from Kentucky, A Political
Biography: 1890-1938. Ph.D. diss., University of Cincinnati, 1967.
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