George E. Chamberlain papers, 1904-1920

George Earle Chamberlain was born in 1854 in Natchez, Mississippi. He studied at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where he earned a law degree. He came to Oregon in 1876, where he taught school in Albany before becoming a deputy clerk for Linn County. In 1880, he was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives, and in 1884, he was elected the district attorney for the third judicial district of Oregon. In 1891, he was appointed as Oregon's first attorney general, a post he held until 1895.

In 1902, Chamberlain was elected governor of Oregon by a slim majority of 246 votes. He was re-elected in 1906. As governor, Chamberlain's legislative activities included prison reform, establishing state railway and library commissions, passing a graduated income tax, and expanding the national forest system in Oregon. He also proved to be a fiscal conservative who vetoed bills that he considered extravagant or poorly drafted.

In 1908, Chamberlain ran for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. Although the Oregon Legislature was majority Republican, because it had signed "Statement No. 1," which pledged legislators to appoint the winner of the popular vote to the Senate, it reluctantly appointed Chamberlain. In 1913, by which time the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allowed the direct election of senators, Chamberlain was re-elected. As senator, Chamberlain was the chief sponsor of the Chamberlain-Ferris Act of 1916, which placed the lands from the Oregon & California Railroad land grant under federal management. He also served on the Military Affairs Committee, where he helped write the selective service law for drafting soldiers during World War I. Chamberlain was defeated in the 1920 election; he was then appointed to the shipping board by U.S. President Warren G. Harding, and served in that post until 1923, when he resigned.

Chamberlain married Sarah Newman Welch (1855-1925) in 1879; the couple had seven children. In 1926, Chamberlain married his clerk, Carolyn B. Shelton (1876-1936). George E. Chamberlain died in 1928.

Sources: "George Chamberlain (1854-1928)," by William G. Robbins, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/chamberlain_george_1854_1928_/; "Dictionary of Oregon History," edited by Howard McKinley Corning, 2nd edition, 1989; obituary in the Oregon Journal, July 9, 1928; obituary in the Oregonian, July 10, 1928.