Leverett Saltonstall

Infobox Governor
name= Leverett A. Saltonstall


imagesize=182px
order=55th
office= Governor of Massachusetts
term_start= January 5, 1939
term_end= January 3, 1945
lieutenant= Horace T. Cahill
predecessor= Charles F. Hurley
successor= Maurice J. Tobin
birth_date= birth date|1892|9|1|mf=y
birth_place= Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
death_date= death date and age |1979|06|17|1892|09|01
death_place=
party= Republican
spouse=Alice Saltonstall
profession=
religion=Unitarian Universalist
order2= United States Senator from Massachusetts
term_start2= January 10, 1945
term_end2= January 3, 1967
predecessor2= Sinclair Weeks
successor2=Edward Brooke

Leverett A. Saltonstall (September 1, 1892–June 17, 1979) was an American Republican politician who served as Governor of Massachusetts (1939–1945) and as a United States Senator (1945–1967).

Saltonstall was born in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts and was a longtime summer resident of Vinalhaven, Maine. As an adult he spent winters on his family estate in Dover, Massachusetts, where he liked to farm. His father was Richard Middlecott Saltonstall, a lawyer; his mother, Eleanor Brooks Saltonstall, was the daughter of a multimillionaire, Peter C. Brooks. He married Alice Wesselhoeft (1893-1981) in 1916, and together they had six children, including Emily (1920-2006), at one time the daughter-in-law of Richard Byrd and a former WAVE; Peter Brooks Saltonstall, killed in action on Guam on August 13, 1944; William Leverett Saltonstall (b. 1927), a former member of the Massachusetts Senate; and Susan (1930-1994), a horse breeder.

Part of the Boston Brahmin Saltonstall family, he was able to trace his ancestral roots to the "Mayflower", the Pilgrims and the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Saltonstall was the tenth generation in direct descent to graduate from Harvard and the great-grandson of a U.S. Congressman of the same name.

A graduate of the private Noble and Greenough School, he graduated from Harvard College in 1914, where he was captain of the Junior Varsity crew that won the prestigious Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta – the first American crew ever to do so – and Harvard Law School in 1917. Prior to being admitted to the bar, he served as a first lieutenant in the United States Army during and after World War I from 1917 to 1919.

Saltonstall, a Republican, entered politics as an alderman in Newton, Massachusetts from 1920 to 1922, while simultaneously serving as an assistant district attorney of Middlesex County from 1921 to 1922. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives that same year; there he rose to the position of Speaker of the House, which he held from 1929 to 1937. In 1936, he was defeated in the election for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, but he made a resounding political comeback two years later when he was elected Governor of Massachusetts, a position he held for three terms from 1939 to 1945.

During that period, Governor Saltonstall mediated a Teamsters strike, reduced taxes, and retired 90 percent of the state's debt. He served as President of the National Governor's Association from 1943 to 1944. In 1944, he also served as the fifth President of the Council of State Governments.

In 1944, he was elected to the United States Senate in a special election to fill the unexpired term created by the resignation of U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. He was re-elected three times to the U.S. Senate, serving from 1945 to 1967. Those he defeated included John Corcoran in 1944, John I. Fitzgerald in 1948, Foster Furcolo in 1954, and Thomas J. O'Connor, Jr. in 1960. During his tenure in the Senate, he served as the Senate Republican Whip and on five influential Senate committees. He also served as the chair of the Senate Republican Conference, 1957–1966.

James Michael Curley once described Saltonstall as having a "Harvard accent with a South Boston face." Though the remark was intended as a political jab, it resonated with truth, as Saltonstall had an uncanny ability to blend his aristocratic lineage with a personable charm which greatly appealed to the average worker and the common man.

Leverett Saltonstall died of congestive heart failure in 1979 aged 86, and is buried in Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts. The Saltonstall Building in downtown Boston is named for him.

External links

*CongBio|S000021 Retrieved on 2008-01-25
* [http://www.mass.gov/statehouse/massgovs/lsaltonstall.htm Official Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Biography]