Biography
Born in Buckfield, Maine to Zadoc Long, he graduated from Harvard University in 1857 and practiced law in Maine and Massachusetts. Long then served as Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1876–1879), Lieutenant Governor (1879), Governor (1880–1883) and Congressman from Massachusetts. He was present at the dedication of the Town Hall in Stoughton, Massachusetts on November 22, 1881. In one of his last acts as governor, appointed Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on 8 December 1882, a last minute appointment as the Governor's Council adjourned that day at 3pm.
Appointed 34th Secretary of the Navy by President William McKinley 5 March 1897, Long served with vision and efficiency through the next five years, organizing the Navy for the challenges of the Spanish-American War and the expansion that followed, and laying the groundwork for the growth of the "New American Navy" fostered by his former assistant, President Theodore Roosevelt.
Long resigned in 1902, returned to Massachusetts, and died at Hingham, Massachusetts in 1915. John Davis Long was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Alpha chapter).
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