William W. Treat

William Wardwell Treat (May 23, 1918 – January 10, 2010) was an American lawyer, judge, banker, and Republican Party official from New Hampshire. He served as chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party from 1954 to 1958, as a member of the Republican National Committee from 1960 to 1964, and as secretary of the United States Electoral College from 1956 to 1964. A probate judge for 25 years, he founded the National College of Probate Judges and authored the three-volume legal treatise Treat on Probate. Later in life, by appointment of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, he served as a United States delegate to the United Nations General Assembly and as the U.S. member of a United Nations human-rights sub-commission in Geneva, which named him a special rapporteur. He was a direct descendant of Robert Treat, colonial governor of Connecticut, and a collateral descendant of Robert Treat Paine, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. With no vice-presidential line on the primary ballot, Treat and Governor Lane Dwinell urged New Hampshire Republicans to write Nixon in, and Treat passed word through his party organization that Nixon deserved renomination; he had told the Associated Press on March 2 that he considered Nixon "well-qualified". More than 22,000 voters wrote in Nixon's name—a record write-in that far outran the nearest alternative, Governor Christian Herter—after which Treat publicly called the outcome a mandate for Nixon, and Nixon telephoned to thank him. In a letter read at the 1984 dinner held in his honor, former President Nixon wrote that Treat "played a decisive role in my political career when he led the campaign for the unprecedented write-in vote I received in the New Hampshire primary in 1956." Nixon added that, although write-in campaigns for president had occurred before, "this was the first time one took place for Vice President," and that the vote "took the steam out of the dump Nixon movement and assured my place on the ticket." During the 1964 New Hampshire Republican presidential primary—won by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. as a write-in candidate while he was serving as U.S. ambassador in Saigon—Treat was New Hampshire's Republican national committeeman. According to Treat's biographer Merle Drown, in December 1963 Lodge's son George asked Treat—a national committeeman regarded as knowledgeable about New Hampshire politics—to travel secretly to Saigon to determine whether the ambassador would accept a draft for the presidency. Treat met Lodge over Christmas 1963 and reported that, although Lodge would not actively campaign, he was genuinely interested in the nomination; the organizers of the Draft Lodge effort treated the report as a green light for a write-in. Bound by his neutrality as national committeeman, Treat took no part in the write-in campaign itself, which a group of volunteers carried to victory in the March 1964 primary. Treat declined to seek another term on the Republican National Committee in 1964, after the New Hampshire Supreme Court recommended that non-elected judges abstain from partisan politics.

Judicial career Treat was appointed a judge of probate in New Hampshire in 1958 and served until his retirement in 1983. To improve the administration of probate law nationally, he organized the National College of Probate Judges in 1968 and served as its first president; the organization, headquartered in Williamsburg, Virginia, grew to more than 600 members. Treat received honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from the University of Maine and the University of New Hampshire (2001). In 1988, Plymouth State College awarded him the Granite State Citizen Award for outstanding citizenship. He established the Treat Scholarship at the University of Maine for students in need.

Treat was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and the Society of Mayflower Descendants, a former governor of the Society of Colonial Wars, a governor of the American Independence Museum in Exeter, and a former trustee of Franklin Pierce College.

In 2018, the University of New Hampshire established the Judge William W. Treat Fellowship in his memory. The program trains undergraduate students to facilitate conversations across political and personal differences, reflecting Treat's reputation for hosting gatherings that brought together guests of widely differing political views.

Personal life and death Treat married Vivian S. Baker of Providence, Rhode Island. They had two children, Jonathan B. Treat II and Mary Esther C. Treat. Treat lived in Stratham, New Hampshire, and Naples, Florida. He died of a heart attack at Naples Community Hospital on January 10, 2010, at the age of 91.