Robert B. Hawley

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1849, Hawley attended Catholic parochial schools and the Christian Brothers College there. After his father died, Hawley took on the duties of caring for his mother and siblings while still in his teens. He studied law under a Judge Bowman of Louisiana.

Hawley moved to Galveston in 1875 at the age of 21. He never practiced law, however, instead becoming a merchant, importer, and manufacturer in the bustling port city for the next 20 years. On December 11, 1878, he married Mary Drake Rice with whom he had a daughter. He was elected to serve as president of the Galveston Board of Education from 1889 to 1893.

Hawley became active in Republican Party politics in the waning years of the Reconstruction era, a time when Texas was almost completely dominated by the Democratic Party. The Galveston area was a center of an urbanized population, including many German immigrants and African-American freedmen, groups that favored the Republican Party. On September 4, 1890, Hawley was elected as the temporary chairman of the Republican state convention in San Antonio. He served as a delegate to several Republican national conventions.

In 1896, the one-term Democratic Congressman Miles Crowley chose not to run for reelection in Texas's 10th congressional district, which at the time included Galveston County. Hawley ran and was elected to the 55th Congress. A 16-year-old Albert Lasker worked as a reporter on the campaign before moving to Chicago and a career in advertising. Hawley successfully ran for reelection in 1898 for the 56th Congress.

In each election, Hawley triumphed with less than 50% of the vote, due to much of the white vote being split between the Democrats and the new Populist Party. During his four years in Congress, he was the only Republican elected from Texas.

In office when Galveston was destroyed by the powerful 1900 hurricane, Hawley decided not to seek reelection. Hawley also realized the likely effects of the poll tax passed by the Texas Legislature in 1901, which sharply reduced voting by minorities and poor whites. Total voter participation dropped markedly in the state in the early 1900s, essentially ending Republican and Populist competition and leaving elections to be dominated by white Democrats. From 1890 to 1910, all states of the former Confederacy passed measures to disfranchise blacks and exclude them from the political process.

He was succeeded by the Democrat George Farmer Burgess.