Earliest Serving United States Governor
This page contains a list of the individuals, who, at the time of their deaths, were the earliest serving governor of any U.S. state who was still living. The current earliest serving U.S. governor is George M. Leader.
America's fascination with the last surviving governor from a certain era has probably most recently highlighted by the death of Governor/Senator Strom Thurmond who was remembered as the last of 10 South Carolina governors from Edgefield, South Carolina who were (at some time in life) segregationists. Thurmond's death was seen as the final closing of an era.
- 1797–1838 — Isaac Tichenor — Vermont
- 1838–1844 — Morgan Lewis — New York
- 1844–1853 — William H. Cabell — Virginia
- 1853–1853 — Mahlon Dickerson — New Jersey
- 1853–1854 — Nehemiah R. Knight — Rhode Island
- 1854–1863 — John Branch — North Carolina
- 1863–1865 — Thomas Bennett, Jr. — South Carolina
- 1865–1871 — William C. Gibbs — Rhode Island
- 1871–1874 — Enos T. Throop — New York
- 1874–1888 — Wyndham Robertson — Virginia
- 1888–1894 — David Dunn — Maine
- 1894–1896 — Alpheus Felch — Michigan
- 1896–1898 — Peter H. Bell — Texas
- 1898–1905 — George S. Boutwell — Massachusetts
- 1905–1915 — William Sprague IV — Rhode Island
- 1915–1933 — Adelbert Ames — Mississippi
- 1933–1938 — Joseph W. Fifer — Illinois
- 1938–1939 — Roswell K. Colcord — Nevada
- 1939–1943 — John E. Osborne — Wyoming
- 1943–1944 — Frederick B. Fancher — North Dakota
- 1944–1946 — John L. Bates — Massachusetts
- 1946–1958 — Fenimore Chatterton — Wyoming
- 1958–1960 — George L. Sheldon — Nebraska
- 1960–1964 — John G. Townsend, Jr. — Delaware
- 1964–1968 — William H. McMaster — South Dakota
- 1968–1984 — George Alexander Parks — Alaska
- 1984–1987 — Alf Landon — Kansas
- 1987–1991 — A. B. "Happy" Chandler I — Kentucky
- 1991–2001 — Harold E. Stassen — Minnesota
- 2001–2002 — Charles Poletti — New York
- 2002–2003 — J. Strom Thurmond — South Carolina
- 2003–2003 — Sid McMath — Arkansas — 1st served January 11, 1949
- 2003–2005 — Elbert N. Carvel — Delaware — 1st served January 18, 1949
- 2005–present — George M. Leader — Pennsylvania
Read more about Earliest Serving United States Governor: Current Living Earliest Serving U.S. Governors
Famous quotes containing the words earliest, serving, united, states and/or governor:
“Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,
Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed,
Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o’er the green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)