John Carl Williams Hinshaw

John Carl Williams Hinshaw (July 28, 1894 – August 5, 1956) was an American businessman and politician who served nine terms as a United States representative from California from 1939 to 1956.

Biography He was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1894, the son of William Wade and Anna Williams Hinshaw. He attended the public schools and Valparaiso University. He graduated from Princeton University in 1916 and pursued a postgraduate course in business administration at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

World War I He served overseas as a First Lieutenant in the Sixteenth Railroad Engineers from May 1917 to September 1919 during and immediately after World War I. He was then discharged as a captain in the Corps of Engineers.

Business career He served as laborer, salesman, and manager in automotive manufacturing in Chicago from 1920 to 1926. He also engaged in investment banking in 1927 and 1928.

Hinshaw moved to Pasadena, California in 1929 and engaged in the real estate and insurance business. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1936 to the Seventy-fifth Congress.

Congress He was elected as a Republican to the Seventy-sixth and to the eight succeeding Congresses and served from January 3, 1939, until his death in Bethesda, Maryland in 1956. He had been renominated in the June 1956 primary election, and was replaced on the general election ballot by H. Allen Smith, who won the full term.

He was a member of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, the Joint Atomic Energy Committee, and the Congressional Air Policy Board (Vice-chairman, 1947 ). He received the Air Force Association's Citation of Honor in 1948, and in 1953 Hinshaw received the National Aeronautic Association's Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy "For his service as a Member of the House of Representatives in fostering the sound and consistent growth of aviation in all its forms, so that it might become a deterrent to war and that it might increasingly become an important carrier of the people and the commerce of the world." Hinshaw supported the GI Bill.

Death and burial He died in Washington, D.C. on August 5, 1956, at the age of 62. He was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery.

Electoral history