Walter Lafferty

Abraham Walter Lafferty ( born June 10, 1875 in Farber, Audrain County, Missouri, † January 15, 1964 in Portland, Oregon ) was an American politician. Between 1911 and 1913 he represented the second and from 1913 to 1915 the third electoral district of the state of Oregon in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early years and rise in Oregon

Lafferty attended the common schools and then studied until 1896 at the University of Missouri Law. After his were made in the same year admitted to the bar, he began in Montgomery City to work in his new profession. Between 1902 and 1904 he was District Attorney in Montgomery County. He also spent three years as a captain in the National Guard of Missouri.

In 1905, Walter Lafferty was hired as the Special Representative of the Federal Land Management. Since his new duties Oregon, he was moved in March 1905 to Portland. He practiced his new office, although only until 1906, but remained in Oregon and worked in Portland as a lawyer. In 1907 he took over the case of his life. He represented the 18 western counties of Oregon to the Oregon and California Railroad. In this dispute, which lasted intermittently until death Lafferty in 1964, it came to damages from the county against the railroad, which resulted from the partially fraudulent sale of former railway land ( Oregon Country Fraud Scandal ). The trial ended in 1915 with a comparison, the Lafferty but did not accept. Until his death he complained in this matter.

Political career

Lafferty was a member of the Republican Party. In 1910 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he replaced William R. Ellis on March 4, 1911. During this time the electoral districts were divided again in Oregon and created a third district for the Congress candidate in the next elections of 1912 for the Lafferty. After his election, he was the first deputy of the third electoral district. Overall, he completed between March 4, 1911 to March 3, 1915 the two terms in Congress. In the elections of 1912, in which the Republicans were split nationwide, because the former Republican Theodore Roosevelt ran as the candidate of the short-lived Progressive Party against Republican President William Howard Taft succeeded Lafferty in Oregon, to be set up as a joint candidate of both parties and elected. In 1914 he applied again for the nomination of his party for Congress. But this time he was defeated in the party Clifton N. McArthur. Then he ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate.

Further CV

After the end of his time in Congress Lafferty again worked as a lawyer in Portland. During World War II, he was a Major in a training camp in San Francisco. Between 1919 and 1933, he then worked as a lawyer in New York. Then he moved to Riverdale, Maryland. In 1946 he returned to Portland, Oregon, where he cared intensely again to his old case against the railway. He also competed in the years 1950-1956 on a regular basis to a return to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1950 he ran as an Independent in the next three elections he was candidate of the Republican Party. All four candidates were ultimately unsuccessful. Walter Lafferty died in January 1964 at the age of 88 years. He was buried in Middletown in his native state of Missouri.