George Shiras III

Who was George Shiras III?

George Shiras, III was a U.S. Representative from the state of Pennsylvania.

George Shiras was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He attended the public schools and Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1881 and from the law department of Yale College in 1883. He was admitted to the Connecticut and Pennsylvania bars in 1883 and commenced the practice of his profession in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He served as a member of the Pennsylvania State House of Representatives in 1889 and 1890. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in 1890.

Shiras was elected as an Independent Republican to the Fifty-eighth Congress. He did not seek renomination in 1904. After his time in Congress, he was engaged in biological research and wildlife photography. On February 14, 1906, Mr. Shiras was elected Associate Member of the Boone and Crockett Club, a conservation organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887. He was attributed with the discovery of a moose subspecies in Yellowstone National Park, which was aptly named Alces alces shirasi, Shiras's Moose. He died in Marquette, Michigan. Interment in Park Cemetery.