Leonard S. Echols

Who was Leonard S. Echols?

Leonard Sidney Echols was an American politician who represented West Virginia in the United States House of Representatives from 1919 to 1923.

Echols was born in Madison, West Virginia. He attended the public schools. He was graduated from the commercial department of the University of Kentucky at Lexington in 1894, from the Concord State Normal School, Athens, West Virginia in 1898, and from the law department of the Southern Normal University, Huntingdon, Tennessee in 1900. After all his formal education, he was admitted to the bar in 1900 and commenced practice in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1903.

Echols was the prosecuting attorney of Mason County, West Virginia 1904-1909 and assistant state tax commissioner for West Virginia 1909-1919. He was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-sixth and Sixty-seventh Congresses. While in Congress, he served as chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Navy. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1922 to the Sixty-eighth Congress and for election in 1924 to the Sixty-ninth Congress.