Francis Griffith Newlands (28 August 1846-24 December 1917) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-NV) from 4 March 1893 to 3 March 1903 (succeeding Horace F. Bartine and preceding Clarence D. Van Duzer) and a US Senator from Nevada from 4 March 1903 to 24 December 1917 (succeeding John P. Jones and preceding Charles B. Henderson).
Biography[]
Francis Griffith Newlands was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1846, the fourth of five children born to Scottish immigrant parents. He was raised in Illinois and Washington DC before moving to San Francisco, California in 1870 and becoming a hotel manager. He became a land developer in the late 1880s (founding Chevy Chase, Maryland), and, in 1892, he was elected to the US House of Representatives from Nevada as a member of the liberal Silver Party. His 1898 Newlands Resolution led to the annexation of Hawaii, and he supported federal aid for conservation, irrigation, and the creation of the Bureau of Reclamation. He went on to serve in the US Senate from 1903 until his death in 1917, supporting the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. Newlands was an avowed white supremacist, supporting restrictions on African-American voting rights, the repeal of the Fifteenth Amendment, and immigration restrictions.