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| Tom Watson |
Thomas Edward Watson was born in what was then Columbia County, but is now McDuffie County, near Thomson, Ga., on Sept. 5, 1856. He was the son of John S. Watson and Anne Eliza Maddock. His paternal grandparents were Thomas Miles Watson and Catherine (Smith) Jones.
He traced his ancestry back to Quakers who came to Georgia in 1768 and settled in Wrightsboro. He attended Mercer University in Macon, Ga. Over his lifetime he taught school, studied law and also engaged in agricultural pursuits.
He was admitted to the bar in 1875 and commenced practice in Thomson in 1876. He married Miss Georgia Durham Oct. 9, 1878, and had three children.
He was a member of the State house of representatives from 1882 to 1883. He was a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket in 1888 and then was elected as a Populist to the Fifty-second Congress (March 4, 1891-March 3, 1893).
Watson was an advocate of Rural Free Delivery of Mail. In 1892, Watson was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election to the Fifty-third Congress and in 1894 for election to the Fifty-fourth Congress.
He resumed the practice of law in Thomson until he was nominated for Vice President by the Populist National Convention in 1896 and for President by the People�s Party in 1904.
Watson published a magazine for many years and later engaged in the newspaper business and authored biographies of Jefferson, Napoleon and Andrew Jackson. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States House of Representatives in 1918.
Finally elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate, he served from March 4, 1921, until his death in Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 1922. He is buried in the Thomson Cemetery in Georgia.
For a comprehensive biography, please visit:
http://www.hickory-hill.org/tom_watson.html.
