Charles Wheaton Elam

Charles Wheaton Elam, Sr. (March 18, 1866 - September 5, 1917), was a Democratic politician from his native Mansfield, a small city in DeSoto Parish in northwestern Louisiana, USA.

Biography

Elam was a son of Joseph Barton Elam, Sr., also a Louisiana politician, and the former Mary Elizabeth Stewart. He graduated in 1887 from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and engaged in the practice of law in DeSoto and the neighboring parishes of Sabine (Many) , and Red River (Coushatta).^[1]

On his 25th birthday in 1891, Elam married the former Lucy Belle Burden, daughter of John Charles and Emma Gertrude Barbee Burden of Baton Rouge. The couple had three children, Charles Wheaton, Jr. (b. 1892), Daniel (b. 1898), and Emma Gertrude (1900-1972).^[1] From 1892 to 1896, Elam served a single term in the Louisiana House of Representatives. During the American Civil War, his father had been the House Speaker^[2] and was thereafter a two-term member of the United States House of Representatives from Louisiana's 4th congressional district. From 1904 to 1910, Charles Elam was a member of the Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors, in which capacity he worked for the establishment of the Louisiana State University Law Center. He was a delegate to the 1909 Louisiana state constitutional convention and to the 1912 Democratic National Convention, which nominated the Wilson-Marshall ticket. Elam was state counsel for the Kansas City Southern Railway.^[1]

Elam was a member of the Masonic lodge. He was a vestryman of the Episcopal Church.^[1] He was a maternal great-uncle of the Louisiana Judge Harmon Drew, Jr., of Minden, an LSU Law Center graduate who sits on the Louisiana Circuit Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit, based in Shreveport.

Elam is interred at Mansfield Cemetery.^[1]

References