Edgar Howard

Who was Edgar Howard?

Edgar Howard was a Nebraska editor and Democratic politician. He was the 15th Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska and served six terms in the United States House of Representatives.

Howard was born in Osceola, Iowa on September 16, 1858. He attended the Western Collegiate Institute and Iowa College of Law. He was a reporter and editor for various newspapers until 1884 when he got a job as an editor for the Papillion Times in Papillion, Nebraska. He passed the bar and set up practice in 1896 in Papillion.

He was elected to the Nebraska House of Representatives in 1894 to 1896 when he was elected probate judge of Sarpy County, Nebraska. Also that year he was a delegate to the 1896 Democratic National Convention. In 1900 he ended his term as judge and purchased the weekly Telegram in Columbus, Nebraska and made it a daily publication in 1922.

In 1917 he became Nebraska's Lieutenant Governor until 1919. He was elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth United States Congress and to the five succeeding Congresses serving from March 4, 1923 to January 3, 1935. During the Seventy-second United States Congress and Seventy-third United States Congress he chaired the U.S. House Committee on Indian Affairs.