William H. Calkins

Who was William H. Calkins?

William Henry Calkins was a U.S. Representative from Indiana.

Born in Pike County, Ohio, Calkins studied law. He was admitted to the bar and practiced. During the Civil War served in the Union Army from May 1861 to December 1865, except three months in 1863, attached to the Fourteenth Iowa Infantry and the Twelfth Indiana Cavalry. Took up his residence in La Porte, Indiana. State's attorney for the ninth Indiana judicial circuit 1866-1870. He served as member of the Indiana House of Representatives in 1871.

Calkins was elected as a Republican to the Forty-fifth and to the three succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1877, to October 20, 1884, when he resigned. He served as chairman of the Committee on Elections. He moved to Tacoma, Washington, and resumed the practice of law. He was appointed United States associate justice of the Territory of Washington in April 1889 and served until November 11, 1889, when the Territory was admitted as a State into the Union. He died in Tacoma, Washington, on January 29, 1894. He was interred in Tacoma Cemetery.