Francis G. Newlands

Francis G. Newlands
United States Senator
from Nevada
In office
March 4, 1903 – December 24, 1917
Preceded byJohn P. Jones
Succeeded byCharles B. Henderson
Member of the
U.S. House of Representatives
from Nevada's At-Large district
In office
March 4, 1893 – March 3, 1903
Preceded byHorace F. Bartine
Succeeded byClarence D. Van Duzer
Personal details
Born
Francis Griffith Newlands

(1846-08-28)August 28, 1846
Natchez, Mississippi, U.S.
DiedDecember 24, 1917(1917-12-24) (aged 71)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Resting placeOak Hill Cemetery
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Political partySilver (1893–1903)
Democratic (1903–1917)
Spouses
Clara Adelaide Sharon
(m. 1874; died 1882)
Edith McCallister
(m. 1888)
Children3
ProfessionAttorney, real estate developer, politician
Signature

Francis Griffith Newlands (August 28, 1846 – December 24, 1917) was an American politician and land developer who served as United States representative and Senator from Nevada and a member of the Democratic Party.[1]

A supporter of westward expansion, he helped pass the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which created the Bureau of Reclamation and boosted the agricultural industry by building dams to support irrigation in the arid Western states.[2] An avowed white supremacist,[3][4][5] Senator Newlands argued publicly for racial restrictions on immigration and repealing the 15th Amendment.[2][6][7]

As land developer, Newlands founded the neighborhoods of Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C.; and Chevy Chase, Maryland,[8] and took steps to prevent non-white people from moving there.[9] To enable the development of these streetcar suburbs, he founded the Rock Creek Railway, which became one of the two major streetcar companies serving the Washington, D.C., area in the early decades of the 20th century.

  1. ^ "NPS: Newlands". Archived from the original on December 13, 2004. Retrieved July 8, 2005.
  2. ^ a b "My Nevada 5: Admired and Reviled Politicians". University of Nevada, Las Vegas. October 23, 2014. Archived from the original on September 8, 2015. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  3. ^ Turque, Bill (December 26, 2014). "In Chevy Chase, a conundrum spouts from fountain named after a racist senator". Washington, D.C. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on August 7, 2015. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  4. ^ Merleaux, April (2015). Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness. UNC Press Books. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-4696-2252-1.
  5. ^ Lancaster, Angela; Mary Sheehan; Gail Sansbury (December 4, 2014). "Letter, CCHS to Gary Thompson" (PDF). Chevy Chase Historical Society. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 6, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
  6. ^ Newlands, Francis G. (1909). "A Western View of the Race Question". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 34 (2): 49–51. doi:10.1177/000271620903400207. S2CID 144515204.
  7. ^ William D. Rowley (1996). Reclaiming the Arid West: The Career of Francis G. Newlands. Indiana University Press.
  8. ^ The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: The Last Great Projects, 1890–1895. JHU Press. January 20, 2015.
  9. ^ Flanagan, Neil (November 2, 2017). "The Battle of Fort Reno". Washington City Paper. Archived from the original on May 17, 2021. Retrieved May 17, 2021.