William Harrell Felton

William Harrell Felton (June 19, 1823 – September 24, 1909) was an American politician, army surgeon, and Methodist minister. Felton was elected to three terms of office to the United States House of Representatives as an Independent Democrat, where he served as a sharp critic of commercial and financial interests and the return to the gold standard.

Felton's wife was Rebecca Latimer Felton, who later became the first woman to serve in the United States Senate, albeit for only one day.

Biography

Early years William Harrell Felton was born on June 19, 1823, near Lexington, Georgia. Felton studied at the University of Georgia in Athens, from which he graduated in 1843. He then studied at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta for a year before spending the next seven years in Cartersville, Georgia practicing medicine, teaching, and farming.

He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1857, and served as a surgeon in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Felton ran as a reform-oriented Independent Democrat, winning election over the electoral opposition of the conservative Bourbon Democrats who dominated Georgia state politics. In response, Felton advocated that Georgia's common people should "hurl the public plunderers from office" and instead elect those who were representatives of "the whole people." Despite these protestations, Felton did not choose to contest the result of the 1880 election, instead returning to his farm and his ministerial work.

In 1884 Felton once again won election to the Georgia House of Representatives, where he would serve until 1890.

Death and legacy Felton died on September 24, 1909, and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Cartersville, Georgia Thirteen years after his death, in 1922, his 87 year-old widow became the first woman to serve as a United States Senator, though only for a single day.

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