Robert N. Stanfield

Infobox Senator
name= Robert N. Stanfield, Jr.


imagesize= 140px
office= United States Senator from Oregon
party= Republican
term= March 4 1921–March 3 1927
preceded= George E. Chamberlain
succeeded= Frederick Steiwer
office2= Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives
term2= 1917–1918
preceded2= Ben Selling
succeeded2= Seymour Jones
constituency2= Umatilla County
date of birth= July 9 1877
place of birth= near Umatilla, Oregon
date of death= death date and age|1945|04|13|1877|07|09
place of death= Weiser, Idaho
spouse= Inez Hill
profession= sheep and cattle rancher
religion=nominally Epsicopalian
footnotes=

Robert Nelson Stanfield (July 9 1877 - April 13 1945) was a United States Senator from Oregon. Born near Umatilla, Oregon, he attended the public schools and the State normal school at Weston. He engaged in the livestock industry and was also interested in banking in Echo and Baker. From 1913 to 1917 he was a member of the Oregon House of Representatives, serving as speaker in 1917.

In 1920, Stanfield was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate and served from March 4, 1921, to March 3, 1927. While in the Senate he was chairman of the Committee to Examine Branches of the Civil Service (Sixty-eighth Congress) and a member of the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys (Sixty-ninth Congress).

He ran for the Republican nomination in 1926. He lost in the May primary election to Frederick Steiwer. He then earned a position on the general election ballot as an independent candidate. [cite news
title=Stanfield to run for Senate again; Oregon Senator, Defeated in Primary, Decides to Accept the Nomination Made by Citizens.
work=The New York Times
date=September 1, 1926] He lost to Steiwer a second time.

R.N., as he was known, was the eldest son of Robert N. Stanfield, a pioneer settler from Illinois, by his second wife. Following in his father's footsteps, he expanded the family landholdings through astute deals and grazing rights on public lands. At one time the family firm ran the world's largest bands of sheep, selling lambs in Omaha and Chicago, mutton in the Northwest, and wool. He was involved in founding the Pendleton Woolen Mills. He was widely admired as smart, handsome and personable. Also he was a true son of the frontier West. [family history and genealogy] During his time in Congress, he took hearings about public land use to the western states for the first time. He considered his greatest success the construction of the Owyhee Dam and irrigation projects in Malheur Co., OR, one of the first desert land reclamation projects. His p.r. was rough and ready: in the midst of prohibition, he was arrested following a drunken bar fight in Baker, OR. When he ran for re-election, his major opponents were the WCTU and the KKK. His admiring cowboy constituency could not elect him. [NY Times]

He resumed his former business pursuits, although without success, having lost his assets to an untrustworthy colleague while inh D.C., and in 1945 died in Weiser, Idaho; interment was in Hillcrest Cemetery. He was survived by his wife and one daughter.

References

*CongBio|S000791

External links

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