William Wallace Wilshire

William Wallace Wilshire was a member of the US House of Representatives from Arkansas. He was born in Shawneetown, Illinois on September 8, 1830 and was educated in the country schools. He spent three years from 1852 to 1855 in California in gold mining during the waning years of the gold rush. Later, he returned to his home in Port Byron and engaged in the coal mining and mercantile business. Wilshire studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1859. During the American Civil War, he entered the Union Army as major in the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, and served from July 16, 1862, to July 16, 1864, when he resigned his commission on account of ill health. After the war located in Little Rock, Arkansas and commenced the practice of law. He was appointed solicitor general of the State in 1867 and served as chief justice of the State supreme court from 1868 to 1871, when he resigned and resumed the practice of law. Wilshire presented credentials as a Republican Member-elect to the Forty-third Congress and served from March 4, 1873, to June 16, 1874, when he was succeeded by Thomas M. Gunter, who contested his election. He was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-fourth Congress, serving from March 4, 1875 to March 3, 1877. Wilshire was not a candidate for renomination in 1876. He instead engaged in the practice of law in Washington, D.C., where he died August 19, 1888; He is interred in Mount Holly Cemetery in Little Rock.

External links

[http://bioguide.congress.gov]