William Ledyard Stark

William Ledyard Stark ( born July 29, 1853 in Mystic, New London County, Connecticut, † November 11, 1922 in Tarpon Springs, Florida ) was an American politician. Between 1897 and 1903 he represented the fourth electoral district of the state of Nebraska in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

William Stark visited the Mystic Valley Institute until 1872. After moving to Wyoming in Stark County in Illinois, he worked as a teacher and store clerk. After studying law at Union College of Law in Chicago and his 1878 was admitted as a lawyer, he moved to Aurora, Nebraska. There, he became head of the school board of this place and was deputy district attorney. After that, he served as a district judge in Hamilton County. William Stark was also a major member of the National Guard of Nebraska, where he was part of the legal department.

Stark was a member of the short-lived Populist Party. For this party, he ran in the congressional elections of 1894 for the first time for the U.S. House of Representatives and was defeated by Republican incumbent Eugene Jerome Hainer. Two years later he was able to defeat Hainer and take his place in Congress on March 4, 1897. After two re- elections he held this office until March 3, 1903. After he had candied in 1902 unsuccessfully for a further term, William Stark moved to Aurora back into retirement. He died in 1922 in Florida and was buried in Aurora.