George P. Lawrence

Infobox_Congressman
name=George Pelton Lawrence


state=Massachusetts
district=1st
term=1898 – 1913
preceded=Ashley B. Wright
succeeded=Allen T. Treadway
date of birth=birth date|1859|5|19|mf=y
place of birth=Adams, Massachusetts
date of death=death date and age|1917|11|21|1859|5|19|mf=y
place of death=New York City, New York
spouse=
profession=
religion=
party=Republican|

George Pelton Lawrence (May 19, 1859 – November 21, 1917) was a United States Representative from Massachusetts.

Born in Adams, Massachusetts, he graduated from Drury Academy in 1876 and from Amherst College in 1880. He studied law at the Columbia Law School, was admitted to the bar in 1883 and commenced practice in North Adams. He was appointed judge of the judicial district of northern Berkshire in 1885, and resigned in 1894 upon being elected to the Massachusetts Senate. He served in the State senate from 1895 to 1897 and was its president in 1896 and 1897.

Lawrence was elected as a Republican to the Fifty-fifth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Ashley B. Wright; he was reelected to the Fifty-sixth and to the six succeeding Congresses and served from November 2, 1897, to March 3, 1913. While in Congress he was chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of War (Fifty-ninth through Sixty-first Congresses). He was not a candidate for renomination in 1912, and from July 1 to September 17, 1913 was a member of the Massachusetts Public Service Commission.

He jumped from an eighth-floor window and fell to his death, at the Belmont Hotel, Atlantic City, New Jersey; interment was in Hillside Cemetery, North Adams.

References

*CongBio|L000133