Joseph Lafayette Rawlins

Who was Joseph Lafayette Rawlins?

Joseph Lafayette Rawlins was a delegate from the Territory of Utah and a Senator from Utah.

Rawlins was born at Millcreek, Salt Lake County, Utah on March 28, 1850.

He pursued a classical course at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. He was a professor at the University of Deseret, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1873–1875. He then studied law; he was admitted to the bar in 1875, and he commenced practice in Salt Lake City. Raised a Mormon, young Joseph disliked the practice of plural marriage and was grateful that his father, Joseph Sharp Rawlins, resisted the pressure of the church to take a second wife. However, when the elder Rawlins did succumb to the authorities, his son began questioning the principles and practices of Mormonism. By the time Joseph Lafayette returned to Utah after his first year at college, he was well on the way toward apostacy in his views, and by the time he became Salt Lake's city attorney, he considered himself a non-Mormon. He never went back to the church.

He was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-third Congress. He was then an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1894 to the Fifty-fourth Congress. He was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1897, to March 4, 1903. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination.