Joseph Roswell Hawley (1826-1905)

Born in Stewartsville, N.C. on October 31, 1826, Joseph Roswell Hawley completed preparatory studies in Connecti-cut and graduated from Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y., in 1847. Hawley studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1850 and commenced practice in Hartford. He became editor of the Hartford Evening Press in 1857. When the Press was consolidated with the Hartford Courant in 1867, he became its editor.

During the Civil War Hawley enlisted in the Union Army as a captain. He was brevetted major general in 1865 and was mustered out in January 1866. Hawley was elected Governor of Connecticut in 1866 and served as president of the United States Centennial Commission to organize the Centennial Exposition from 1873 to 1876. Elected as a Republican to the Forty-second Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Julius L. Strong, Hawley was reelected to the Forty-third Congress and served from 1872 to 1875. He was then elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1881, reelected in 1887, 1893, and 1899, and served from 1881 to 1905 when he declined to be a candidate for re-nomination.

Hawley served as chairman of the Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment (Forty-seventh through Forty-ninth Congresses), the Committee on Military Affairs (Fiftieth through Fifty-second and Fifty-fourth through Fifty-eighth Congresses. He was appointed a brigadier general in the United States Army on the retired list in 1905.

Hawley died in Washington, D.C., on March 17, 1905.