1. Leverett Atholville Saltonstall was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts.
27 Facts About Leverett Saltonstall
1. 2.
Leverett Saltonstall served three two-year terms as the 55th Governor of Massachusetts, and for more than twenty years as a United States senator.
3.
Leverett Saltonstall was the only member of the Republican Senate leadership to vote for the censure of Joseph McCarthy.
4.
Leverett Saltonstall was born on September 1,1892 in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts to Richard Middlecott Saltonstall, an attorney, and Eleanor Brooks Saltonstall, an heiress to the Peter Chardon Brooks fortune.
5.
The Leverett Saltonstall family had deep colonial roots, as did that of his mother.
6.
Leverett Saltonstall was educated at the private Noble and Greenough School in Dedham and the Evans School for Boys in Mesa, Arizona, an upper-crust ranch school where his classmates included Nicholas Roosevelt.
7.
Leverett Saltonstall was active in varsity sports at Harvard, notably captaining the first American crew to win the Grand Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta in 1914.
8.
Leverett Saltonstall played football and hockey, scoring a dramatic overtime goal in a 1914 win over Hobey Baker's Princeton team.
9.
Leverett Saltonstall served as a first lieutenant in the 301st Field Artillery Regiment in the 76th Division in World War I, spending six months in France.
10.
Leverett Saltonstall was discharged in 1919, and then entered the law firm of his uncle.
11.
Leverett Saltonstall was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives that same year; there he rose to the position of Speaker of the House, which he held from 1929 to 1937.
12.
In 1930 Leverett Saltonstall became a compatriot of the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
13.
In 1936, Leverett Saltonstall decided to seek the Republican nomination for Governor of Massachusetts.
14.
Leverett Saltonstall's friends were able to engineer his nomination for lieutenant governor.
15.
Leverett Saltonstall was reelected in 1940 and 1942; the 1940 election win was by an extremely narrow margin.
16.
Leverett Saltonstall served as president of the National Governors Association from 1943 to 1944.
17.
In 1944, Leverett Saltonstall was elected to the United States Senate in a special election to fill the unexpired term created by the resignation of US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
18.
Leverett Saltonstall was re-elected three times, serving from 1945 to 1967.
19.
Leverett Saltonstall was viewed as a political moderate, and served as a mediating force between the party's conservative and progressive wings.
20.
Leverett Saltonstall was an unspectacular but effective legislator, good at drafting legislation and finding compromise language.
21.
Leverett Saltonstall voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957,1960, and 1964, as well as the 24th Amendment to the US Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
22.
Leverett Saltonstall was one of thirteen Republican senators to vote in favor of the creation of Medicare.
23.
In 1916, Leverett Saltonstall married Alice Wesselhoeft of Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
24.
Leverett Saltonstall opted not to run for reelection in 1966, in part to provide an opportunity for his seat to Edward Brooke, a rising star in Massachusetts Republican circles.
25.
Leverett Saltonstall retired to his farm in Dover, where he spent his remaining years as a gentleman farmer.
26.
Leverett Saltonstall died of congestive heart failure in 1979 aged 86, and is buried in Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts.
27.
The Leverett Saltonstall Building in downtown Boston is named for him.