William Henry Sowden

William Henry Sowden ( born June 6 1840 in Liskeard, Cornwall, England; † March 3, 1907 in Allentown, Pennsylvania ) was an American politician. Between 1885 and 1889 he represented the State of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

In 1846, William Sowden came with his father from his native England to Philadelphia. They eventually moved to Allentown, where he attended the public schools and the Allentown Academy. Between August 1862 and May 1863, he served during the Civil War as a soldier in the army of the Union. He has since been seriously wounded. After a subsequent law degree in 1865 and its recent approval as a lawyer, he began to Allentown to work in this profession. From 1872 to 1874 he was a prosecutor in the local Lehigh County. Politically, he was a member of the Democratic Party. In 1874, he ran unsuccessfully for the office of lieutenant-governor of his state. Two years later failed his first candidacy for Congress. In July 1884 he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in part, was nominated to the Grover Cleveland as a presidential candidate.

In the congressional elections of 1884 Sowden in the tenth constituency of Pennsylvania was in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of William Mutchler on March 4, 1885. After a re-election he was able to complete in Congress until March 3, 1889 two legislative sessions. In 1888 he gave up another candidacy.

After the end of his time in the U.S. House of Representatives practiced Sowden again as a lawyer. From 1900 to 1902 he was a legal representative of his hometown of Allentown. In 1900 he was again a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. He then moved to the Republicans. In 1904, he applied as a candidate his new party unsuccessfully to return to Congress. In 1906 he was a legal representative of the Lehigh County. William Sowden died on March 3, 1907 in Allentown, where he was also buried.