Furnifold McLendel SIMMONS, Congress, NC (1854-1940)

SIMMONS Furnifold McLendel , a Representative and a Senator from North Carolina; born on his father's plantation near Polloksville, Jones County, N.C., January 20, 1854; attended a private school and Wake Forest (N.C.) College; graduated from Trinity College (now Duke University), Durham, N.C., in 1873; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1875; moved to New Bern, Craven County, N.C., in 1876 and commenced the practice of law; elected as a Democrat to the Fiftieth Congress (March 4, 1887-March 3, 1889); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1888 to the Fifty-first Congress and for election to Congress in 1890; resumed the practice of law in New Bern; appointed by President Grover Cleveland as collector of internal revenue for the fourth district of North Carolina 1893-1897; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1900; reelected in 1906, 1912, 1918 and 1924 and served from March 4, 1901, to March 3, 1931; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1930; chairman, Committee on Disposition of Useless Executive Papers (Sixty-first Congress), Committee on Engrossed Bills (Sixty-first and Sixty-second Congresses), Committee on Finance (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Additional Accommodations for the Library of Congress (Sixty-sixth Congress); resided in New Bern, N.C., until his death there on April 30, 1940; interment in Cedar Grove Cemetery.

Bibliography

Dictionary of American Biography; Rippy, J. Fred, ed. F.M. Simmons: Statesman of the New South. Durham: Duke University Press, 1936; Watson, Richard L., Jr. "Furnifold M. Simmons and the Politics of White Supremacy." In Race, Class, and Politics in Southern History: Essays in Honor of Robert F. Durden, edited by Jeffrey J. Crow, Paul D. Escott, and Charles L. Flynn, Jr., pp. 126-72. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present