Thomas C. Hennings, Jr.

Thomas Carey Hennings, Jr. (June 25, 1903 – September 13, 1960) was an American political figure from Missouri, and a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives (from 1935 until 1940), and the United States Senate (from 1951 until 1960).

Born in St. Louis, he attended the public schools and graduated from Cornell University in 1924. While at Cornell, Hennings was elected to the Sphinx Head Society. and from the law department of Washington University (St. Louis) in 1926. He was admitted to the bar in 1926 and commenced practice in St. Louis, and served as assistant circuit attorney for that city from 1929 to 1934. He served as a colonel on the Governor's staff from 1932 to 1936 and was a lecturer on criminal jurisprudence at the Benton College of Law in St. Louis from 1934 to 1938.

Hennings was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-fourth, Seventy-fifth, and Seventy-sixth Congresses and served from January 3, 1935, until his resignation on December 31, 1940, to become a candidate for circuit attorney of St. Louis. He was circuit attorney from 1941 to 1944, and served as a lieutenant commander in the United States Naval Reserve from 1941 to 1943, after which he resumed the practice of law. He was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1950 over Republican incumbent and former governor Forrest Donnell in the only senate election that year where Democrats took a seat from Republicans, was reelected in 1956, and served from January 3, 1951, until his death in Washington, D.C. in 1960. While in the Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on Rules and Administration (Eighty-fifth and Eighty-sixth Congresses). Interment was in Arlington National Cemetery.

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*CongBio|H000502