George P. Wetmore

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

George Peabody Wetmore (August 2, 1846 – September 11, 1921) was an American politician from Rhode Island who served as the 37th governor of Rhode Island and later as a United States senator.

Early life
Wetmore was born in London while his parents visited there. His father, William Shepard Wetmore, was a wealthy trader. He grew up in Rhode Island and attended private schools in Newport. He graduated from Yale College in 1867, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. He then studied at Columbia Law School, earning his LL.B. in 1869, and was admitted to the bars of Rhode Island and New York, though he never practiced law.

Career and public service
Wetmore was active in politics and served as a presidential elector in 1880 and 1884. He was elected Governor of Rhode Island and served from 1885 to 1887, helping supervise the construction of the new Rhode Island State House in Providence.

U.S. Senate
In 1894, Wetmore was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island and served from 1895 to 1907. In 1907, he faced a three-way race with Samuel P. Colt and Democrat Robert Hale Ives Goddard, which left the seat vacant for a time. Colt withdrew, and Wetmore returned to the Senate in January 1908, serving until 1913. While in the Senate, he chaired the Committee on Manufactures and later the Joint Committee on the Library for sixteen years, and he served on several other important committees. He was especially interested in building up the Navy and in developing the Narragansett Bay naval base. He helped lead commissions related to the U.S. Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial, and other national memorials.

Contributions and private life
Wetmore was deeply involved in the arts and civic life. He helped organize the Metropolitan Opera in New York and supported the construction of the Metropolitan Opera House. He was a trustee of Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Education Fund, and he helped found the Jockey Club. In Newport, he was a leader in several local institutions, including the Redwood Library, Newport Hospital, Newport Reading Room, and Newport Casino.

Personal life
In 1869, Wetmore married Edith Malvina Keteltas, and they had four children (two sons who died young). He died in Boston in 1921 and was buried in Island Cemetery in Newport after a funeral at Trinity Church in Newport. His Newport estate, Chateau-sur-Mer, is now preserved by the Preservation Society of Newport County and is open for tours in the summer. He was also a party to the Supreme Court case Wetmore v. Tennessee Copper Company (1910).