Benjamin F. Shively

Who was Benjamin F. Shively?

Benjamin Franklin Shively was a United States Representative and Senator from Indiana. Born near Osceola, Indiana, attended the common schools and the Northern Indiana Normal School at Valparaiso. He taught school from 1874 to 1880, engaged in journalism from 1880 to 1884, and was secretary of the National Anti-Monopoly Association in 1883. In 1884 he was president of the board of Indiana University and was elected as a National Anti-Monopolist to the Forty-eighth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of William H. Calkins, serving from December 1, 1884, to March 3, 1885.

Shively graduated from the law department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1886, was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice in South Bend, Indiana. He was elected as a Democrat to the Fiftieth, Fifty-first, and Fifty-second Congresses, serving from March 4, 1887 to March 4, 1893; he was not a candidate for renomination in 1892, and resumed the practice of law in South Bend. He was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Governor of Indiana in 1896, and was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1906 to the Sixtieth Congress; in 1909 he was elected to the U.S.