Bryan, William Jennings.

Noted American orator and p*litician, born at Salem, Illinois, March 19, 1860, died Dayton, Tenn., July 26, 1925. Graduated Illinois College of Law, 1881, Union College of Law, Chicago, 1883. Practiced law at Jacksonville, Ill. 1883-1887, after which he moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he was accepted a Freemason in Lincoln Lodge No. 10 at Lincoln. He was elected to Congress in 1890 and 1892. He edited the Omaha World-Herald 1894-96. He was nominated on the Democratic ticket for President of the United States in 1896, but was defeated by William McKinley, also a Freemason. Bryan was a Colonel in the w*r with Spain in 1898, but ran for President again in 1900 and was defeated by McKinley a second time. He founded and published the Commoner, a p*litical weekly. In 1908, he was nominated a third time for President on the Democratic ticket and defeated by William Howard Taft, also a Freemason. He was appointed Secretary of State in President Wilson’s Cabinet in 1913, manifested extreme pacifist opinions in opposing w*r with Germany, and resigned his position June 9, 1915. He was a r*ligious and Biblical fundamentalist and joined in the prosecution of John T. Scopes, a school teacher, for violating the Tennessee statute forbidding the teaching of the doctrine of evolution. Bryan died five days after the close of the trial in which Scopes was convicted.