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Around the Capital (detail), engraving, Thomas Fleming, 1902, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives |
BROWNLOW, Walter Preston, (nephew of William Gannaway Brownlow),
a Representative from Tennessee; born in Abingdon, Washington
County, Va., March 27, 1851; attended the common schools; employed as a
telegraph messenger boy when only ten years of age; became an apprentice in the
tinning business at the age of fourteen and later became a locomotive engineer;
entered upon newspaper work as a reporter for the Knoxville Whig and Chronicle
in 1876; in the same year purchased the Herald and Tribune in Jonesboro, Tenn.;
delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1880, 1884, 1896, 1900, and
1904; appointed postmaster at Jonesboro in March 1881; resigned in the
following December to accept the position of Doorkeeper of the House of
Representatives in the Forty-seventh Congress and served in that capacity from
1881 to 1883; member of the Republican National Committee in 1884, 1896, and
1900; elected as a Republican to the Fifty-fifth and to the six succeeding
Congresses and served from March 4, 1897, until his death; member of the Board
of Managers for the National Soldiers Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers
1902-1910; died at the National Soldiers Home, Johnson City, Washington
County, Tenn., July 8, 1910; interment in the Soldiers Home Cemetery.
BibliographyBeeson, Helen S. Walter P. Brownlow, Republican. Masters
thesis, East Tennessee State University, 1967.
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