Edward Hooker Gillette

Edward Hooker Gillette (October 1, 1840 – August 14, 1918) was a nineteenth-century populist politician, editor, and farmer from Iowa who served one term in the United States House of Representatives as a Greenback Party member from Iowa’s 7th congressional district. A prominent figure in the Greenback, Union Labor, and Populist movements, he was the son of U.S. Senator Francis Gillette and Elisabeth Daggett Hooker, a descendant of the colonial clergyman Rev. Thomas Hooker, and the brother of noted actor and playwright William Gillette.

Gillette was born in Bloomfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, on October 1, 1840. He attended the public schools in nearby Hartford, where his father was an influential antislavery politician and reformer. Growing up in a family deeply engaged in public affairs and social causes, he was exposed early to political debate and reformist ideas. Seeking further education, he attended the New York State College of Agriculture in Ovid, New York. His studies there were cut short, however, when family business interests in the West required his attention.

During the Civil War era, anticipating the economic opportunities of westward expansion, Francis Gillette and his brother-in-law John Hooker invested in a concern that owned thousands of acres of land in Iowa, then a relatively new state admitted to the Union in 1846 as the twenty-ninth state. In 1863 Edward left college to oversee this investment. He settled on a large farm outside Des Moines, the new capital of Iowa, where he raised high-bred livestock and developed the property. He later purchased another farm in Walnut Township, about four miles west of Des Moines, and engaged in several business enterprises, including building and manufacturing, while continuing to improve and expand his farming operations.

On June 26, 1866, Gillette married Sophia Theresa Stoddard. She had previously been betrothed to his brother Robert Gillette, who was killed in the Civil War at Fort Fisher, near Wilmington, North Carolina, on the morning after the surrender of the fort. Edward and Sophia had three children together, a son and two daughters. The marriage later ended in divorce. On February 28, 1907, Gillette married his second wife, Mrs. Jennie Isabel Apple. Throughout these years, he maintained his principal residence on his Iowa farms, ultimately establishing his home at Clover Hills Place near Valley Junction, close to Des Moines.

Gillette’s political and editorial career developed in tandem with the agrarian and monetary reform movements that gained strength in the post–Civil War decades. He became editor of the Iowa Tribune, which served as the central organ of the Populist Party in Iowa, and he used the paper to advocate for currency reform, labor rights, and policies favorable to farmers and working people. He served for ten years as editor of the Iowa Tribune. At the national level he was active in third-party politics, serving as chairman of the Greenback Party’s National Committee and later as chairman of the National Committee of the Union Labor/Populist Party. He was a delegate to the Greenback Party’s National Convention in 1876, held in Indianapolis, where the party formally organized around issues such as an expanded paper currency and relief for debt-burdened farmers and workers.

In 1878, as the Greenback movement broadened into the Greenback-Labor Party and cooperated with Democrats in certain races, Gillette was nominated to run for Congress from Iowa’s 7th congressional district. The May 1876 convention in Indianapolis had laid the groundwork for this new political alignment, and by 1878 the Greenback-Labor Party was gaining significant support in the rural West and Midwest. Gillette’s campaign was marked by personal energy and a direct, forthright style reminiscent of his father. The Hartford Times reported on October 10 that his election was “a great triumph for this Hartford young man,” noting that he had been nominated first by the Greenbackers and then by the Democrats in a district that had given a Republican majority of 6,000 votes in the previous election. Lacking substantial financial backing, he relied on a personally conducted canvass, selling newspapers and political documents at ten cents each from the platform and among crowds to fund his effort. His success in overturning a 6,000-vote Republican majority into a roughly 1,000-vote majority in his favor was cited as evidence both of his personal popularity and of the growing appeal of his political ideas in Iowa.

Gillette was elected as a Greenback Party member to the Forty-sixth Congress and served from March 4, 1879, to March 3, 1881, alongside fellow Iowa Greenbacker James B. Weaver. During his term in Congress he represented Iowa’s 7th congressional district and continued to champion the monetary and agrarian reform issues central to the Greenback and allied movements. While in office he also served as chairman of the State Central Committee of the Union Labor Party, reflecting his ongoing commitment to coalition-building among reform and labor groups. The Greenback-Labor Party’s national strength in this period was demonstrated by its tally of more than a million votes and the election of fifteen congressmen in 1878, including Gillette. In the 1880 election, however, the Democrats ran their own candidate in his district, splitting the anti-Republican vote and enabling former diplomat John A. Kasson, a Republican who had previously served in Congress, to regain the seat. Gillette thus served only a single term.

After leaving Congress, Gillette remained active in Iowa politics and in the broader populist cause. He continued his editorial work and leadership within third-party organizations, serving for years as chairman of the National Committee of the Union Labor/Populist Party and as a prominent advocate for farmers and laborers. In 1893 he was the People’s Party candidate for Iowa Secretary of State, although he was unsuccessful in that race. Beyond politics, he contributed to civic and humanitarian efforts, serving for years as one of the directors of the Iowa Humane Society, reflecting his interest in social reform and animal welfare.

Gillette spent his later years on his farm, Clover Hills Place, near Valley Junction, Iowa, not far from Des Moines. He remained identified with the agrarian and reform traditions that had shaped his public life, while continuing to reside in the community he had helped develop since the 1860s. He died at Clover Hills Place on August 14, 1918, at the age of seventy-eight. He was interred in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa, making him the only member of his immediate family not buried in the Hooker or Gillette family plots in Farmington, Connecticut.