John Hall Stephens

John Hall Stephens, lawyer and congressman, the son of L. H. and Caroline (Truitt) Stephens, was born in Shelby County, Texas, on November 22, 1847.  He attended the common schools in Mansfield, Tarrant County and was graduated from Mansfield College.  Following his graduation, he took a law degree from Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1872. Stephens was a Mason and a member of the Cumberland Presbyterian church.

He was admitted to the bar in 1873 and began his law practice at Montague, Texas. In 1889 he moved his practice to Vernon, then still practically on the frontier.  In 1873 he married Annie Chrisman of Mansfield, Texas and together had seven children.

Stephens was a member of the Texas Senate from 1886 to 1888 and Democratic representative from Texas in the Fifty-fifth and nine succeeding Congresses, 1897 to 1917.  He served as chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs in the Sixty-second through Sixty-fourth Congresses.  He ran unsuccessfully for reelection in 1916.

Annie died in 1906.  In 1911 Stephens took a second wife, Lizette Bristow, a widow from Portland, Oregon.

In 1917 he moved to Monrovia, California, where he died on November 18, 1924. His body was returned to East View Cemetery in Vernon for burial.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1928.
Buckley B. Paddock, ed., A Twentieth Century History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas. Chicago: Lewis, 1906.

 

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