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Frank S. Carden

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Frank S. Carden
Member of the Tennessee House of Representatives
In office
1907–1911
ConstituencyHamilton
Personal details
Born(1882-02-06)February 6, 1882
Franklin, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedMarch 4, 1934(1934-03-04) (aged 52)
Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
SpouseFrances Campbell
EducationCumberland Law School
OccupationLawyer, politician

Frank S. Carden (February 6, 1882 – March 3, 1934) was an attorney and politician.[1]

Career

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Frank Stamper Carden was born in Franklin, North Carolina; his father, W. C. Carden, was a Southern Methodist Minister,[1][2] and his mother was Martha Stewart.[3] His siblings included Leonard A. Carden and Robert A. Carden, who later were partners in Carden Brothers, an engineering firm;[4] and two sisters, Mary Carden and Mrs. Milton V. Griscomb.[3]

Frank Carden spent two years at Emory and Henry College in Virginia,[5] and then went to Trinity College, graduating in 1901 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.[5][6] He taught in eastern North Carolina, and then worked for an iron, coal and coke company in West Virginia, before obtaining a law degree from Cumberland Law School.[1][5][6] He was editor in chief of the Cumberland Weekly, a student paper of the university, during the spring 1904 term.[7]

Carden declared his candidacy for the Tennessee House of Representatives in April 1906, for Hamilton county,[8] and won the nomination at the Democratic convention on September 15.[9] At the general election in November he won 3,230 votes and was elected for the 1907 term.[10][11] He chaired the municipal affairs committee during this term.[12] In February 1907, when the Pendleton bill (a temperance bill) came before the house, Carden spoke against it, saying that "the state is running mad over temperance and reform".[13]

In March 1907 he started a law firm, Vance & Carden, in Chattanooga, with a partner, D. B. Vance.[14]

He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives again for the 1909 legislative session, this time with 4,579 votes.[15][16] In January 1909 he spoke against the prohibition bill being debated,[17] and eventually became known as an active opponent of Tennessee's dry laws.[1] In the 1909 session he was chair of the committee on jails and workhouses.[18] That session he introduced a bill to enable the state to earn interest on state money deposited with banks; at that time the state did not earn any interest on their deposits, which could be up to a million dollars.[19] He did not run for re-election for the 1911 session.[20]

In April 1911 he was appointed poll tax collector for Hamilton county, a newly created position, for an eight-year term.[21] He was a member of the board that ran the primary elections for Hamilton County in August 1912.[22]

Head and shoulders of a man in a suit and tie
Frank S. Carden in about 1915

In October 1914 he announced his candidacy for city attorney of Chattanooga.[23]. He was elected to the post on April 13, 1915[1][24] and consequently resigned his post as poll tax collector.[25] That April he also started a law firm, Carden & Snyder, with W. R. Snyder. [26] Carden was re-elected as city attorney in 1919.[3] In 1922 Carden and Ruth Durant Evans assembled all Chattanooga's ordinances into a single volume that became known as the Carden and Evans Code.[27][6]. Carden resigned in July 1922 and returned to practicing law privately.[1][3][28]

He was one of the founders of the Children's Hospital at Erlanger in the 1920s.[3] In 1926, Carden was one of the lawyers who wrote an amicus brief for the Tennessee Academy of Science for the Scopes Trial.[29]

He was active in the campaign in Tennessee for the Twenty-First Amendment to the US constitution, repealing prohibition.[30]

He married Frances Campbell on June 25, 1908.[1][31] They had three children;[1] their daughter Frances was born in October 1909,[32][33] and their son Campbell in September 1915,[34] He also had a son named Frank Jr.,[3] and a daughter, Alice Hall Carden.[35] He died of heart disease in Chattanooga on March 3, 1934,[1][36] and was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery.[36] At the time of his death he was a senior partner in the law firm of Shepherd, Carden, Curry & Levine.[37]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i New York Times (March 4, 1934), p. 31.
  2. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (March 5, 1934), p. 2.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Chattanooga News (March 3, 1934), p. 1.
  4. ^ Chattanooga Star (February 20, 1907), p. 3.
  5. ^ a b c Chattanooga News (September 22, 1906), p. 8.
  6. ^ a b c Chattanooga Daily Times (March 4, 1934), p. 5.
  7. ^ Students of Cumberland University (1904), p. 131.
  8. ^ Chattanooga News (April 7, 1906), p. 11.
  9. ^ Chattanooga News (September 15, 1906), p. 8.
  10. ^ Chattanooga Daily News (November 7, 1906), p. 9.
  11. ^ "Tennessee 55th General Assembly". www.capitol.tn.gov. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  12. ^ Knoxville Sentinel (March 21, 1907), p. 1.
  13. ^ Knoxville Sentinel (February 5, 1907), p. 3.
  14. ^ Chattanooga News (March 7, 1907), p. 9.
  15. ^ "Tennessee 56th General Assembly". www.capitol.tn.gov. Retrieved 2025-01-02.
  16. ^ Chattanooga News (November 4, 1908), p. 12.
  17. ^ Daily Chattanooga (January 14, 1909), p. 1.
  18. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (February 7, 1909), p. 3.
  19. ^ Chattanooga News (April 22, 1909), p. 4.
  20. ^ Chattanooga News (August 22, 1910), p. 3.
  21. ^ Chattanooga News (April 19, 1911), p. 5.
  22. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (July 8, 1912), p. 3.
  23. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (October 6, 1914), p. 5.
  24. ^ Journal and Tribune (April 14, 1915), p. 5.
  25. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (April 21, 1915), p. 5.
  26. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (April 20, 1915), p. 12.
  27. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (April 30, 1922), p. 5.
  28. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (July 7, 1922), p. 14.
  29. ^ The Tennessean (May 28, 1926), p. 11.
  30. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (March 4, 1909), p. 5.
  31. ^ Nashville Banner (June 26, 1908), p. 7.
  32. ^ Chattanooga News (October 22, 1909), p. 8.
  33. ^ Knoxville Sentinel (October 30, 1909), p. 8.
  34. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (September 4, 1915), p. 6.
  35. ^ Chattanooga Daily Times (September 17, 1933), p. 18.
  36. ^ a b Chattanooga News (March 5, 1934), p. 2.
  37. ^ Shalett (March 4, 1934), p. 6.

Sources

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Newspapers by date

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Newspapers by author

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Other sources

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  • Students of Cumberland University (1904). The Phoenix. Lebanon, Tennessee: Cumberland University.
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