Joseph E. Ransdell

Joseph Eugene Ransdell (October 7, 1858 – July 27, 1954) was a United States Representative and Senator from Louisiana. Born in Alexandria, the seat of Rapides Parish in central Louisiana, Ransdell attended public schools. In 1882, he graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1883 and practiced in Lake Providence, the seat of East Carroll Parish in far northeastern Louisiana, from 1883-1889. He was district attorney for the 8th Judicial District of Louisiana from 1884-1896. He was a planter of cotton and pecan groves. From 1896-1899, he served on the Fifth Levee District Board. He was a member of the state constitutional convention in 1898.

In 1899, Ransdell was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-sixth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Samuel T. Baird. He won his first full term in Congress in 1900, having defeated the Republican businessman Henry E. Hardtner of Urania in La Salle Parish, 6,172 votes (90.8 percent) to 628 (9.2 percent). Hardtner was the last Republican to contest the seat until 1976, when Frank Spooner of Monroe waged a strong challenge to the Democrat Jerry Huckaby of Ringgold in Bienville Parish. By 1910, Hardtner had switched to Democratic affiliation and served for two years in the Louisiana House of Representatives as the first member ever from La Salle Parish. From 1924-1928, he was a state senator.

Ransdell served in the House from August 29, 1899, to March 4, 1913. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1912, having instead been elected by the Louisiana State Legislature to the United States Senate. In 1918, he defeated future Senator John H. Overton of Alexandria in a disputed outcome. Ransdell won his third term in the Democratic primary in 1924, having defeated Lee Emmett Thomas, the mayor of Shreveport, 104,312 (54.9 percent) to 85,547 (45.1 percent).

He served from March 4, 1913, to March 4, 1931, having been denied renomination in 1930 by then Governor Huey Pierce Long, Jr. Long received 149,640 votes (57.3 percent) to Ransdell's 111,451 (42.7 percent). Long was then elected without Republican opposition in the general election.

While in Congress he was chairman of the Committee on Public Health and National Quarantine (Sixty-third through Sixty-fifth Congresses) and a member of the Committee on Mississippi River and Its Tributaries (Sixty-sixth Congress). It was in this capacity that Randsell sponsored the Ransdell Act, which created the National Institutes of Health.

In 1920, he founded a printing firm in Washington, D.C. He returned to Lake Providence in 1931 and engaged in the real estate business, cotton planting, and pecan growing and was a member of the board of supervisors of Louisiana State University and Agricultural College at Baton Rouge from 1940- 1944. He died in Lake Providence and is interred in Lake Providence Cemetery.

The definitive biography of Ransdell was written in 1951 by Adras LaBorde, (1912–1993), long-time managing editor of the Alexandria Daily Town Talk.

See also

• Ransdell Act

External links

• Joseph E. Ransdell at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Joseph E. Ransdell at Find a Grave
• Cemetery Memorial by La-Cemeteries