William Hall Doolittle is Born

Today in Masonic History William Hall Doolittle is born in 1848.

William Hall Doolittle was an American politician.

Doolittle was born in Eire County, Pennsylvania November 6, 1848, his parents moved to Portage County, Wisconsin in 1859 where he attended the district school. In 1865 as the Civil War was drawing to a conclusion, he enlisted as a private in the Ninth Wisconsin Battery. After the war In 1867 he went to Pennsylvania to attended school. Later moving to Chautauqua County, New York, there he studied law, being admitted to the New York Bar in 1871.

The next year he moved to Nebraska where he set up his own law practice in Tecumseh. He was a member of the Nebraska State House of Representatives 1874-1876, the assistant United States district attorney from 1876 until 1880 when he moved to Washington Territory. He settled in Colfax in the eastern part of the Territory practicing law there until 1888. He then relocated to Tacoma, which at the time was the largest town in the Puget Sound region and a major port.

He was elected twice as a Republican to the Fifty-Third and Fifty-Fourth Congresses [1893-1897] but was unsuccessful in a bid for reelection to the Fifty-sixth Congress in 1896. He resumed his law practice in Tacoma dying there February 26, 1914 to be interred in Tacoma Cemetery. In an April 19, 1883 Colfax The Weekly Vidette he was described as a "distinguished gentleman."

Doolittle was raised in Hiram Lodge #21 in Colfax, Washington on September 17th, 1884 and demitted November 28th, 1891.

This article provided by Brother Coe Tug Morgan – Honorary Grand Secretary, Past Grand Historian Grand Lodge F. & A. M. of Washington.