Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,527

This is the grave of Levi Ankeny.

Born outside of St, Joseph, Missouri in 1844, Ankeny grew up a kid of the frontier. Despite being pretty much on the frontier, his parents kept looking for new chances and so in 1850, took the Oregon Trail west. They stopped in Portland and that’s where Ankeny finished growing up.

As an adult, Ankeny sought business opportunities in Idaho and Washington, which were not even states yet when he started. He lived in the mining camp of Florence, Idaho for awhile, which was a gold rush town in the early 1860s before disappearing after the gold panned out. He then went to Orofino, Idaho and finally he moved to Lewiston, Idaho and became mayor there, as a Republican. In fact, he was the town’s first mayor in the early 1870s. He was also in banking by this time and after he was Lewiston’s mayor, he moved to Walla Walla, Washington, which was a larger and quite prosperous town (and is again today for those of you who have visited this wine mecca can attest). He was a well-connected Republican and somehow got named to the board of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo held in 1901 and eventually became the head of it. I am curious about this, but really can’t find anything.

In 1902, Washington Republicans, who controlled the statehouse, decided to send Ankeny to the other Washington as a senator. Or more accurately, he paid the Washington state legislature off to get the position. Rumors surrounded him immediately that he had used $49,000 of his own money to get the position. This was far from uncommon, especially in the American West. Eventually, William Clark went so over the top in Montana that it led to the passage and ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, which some Republicans still rue today. Ankeny was for sure an old school corrupt Gilded Age Republican who loved him some whiskey and cigars and backroom deals in smoky rooms and all that. The rumor on this expanded with a Collier’s article in 1908 that accused both him and Oregon’s Charles Fulton of having bought their seats. There weren’t citations, but it was probably true. The railroads were big backers of Ankeny, which says about all you need to know about why and how he was corrupt.

Ankeny served one term. He became head of the United States Senate Committee on Coast and Insular Survey, which was a regionally important committee at the time, though it was disbanded in 1921. He was its chair from 1903-05. He also looked out for local interests in his other committee work, which included the Irrigation and Reclamation Committee and the Commerce Committee. In other words, he was a pretty bog standard Republican with interests in developing the American West under the guise of private industry.

Ankeny was a pretty bad senator by most lights. He was so corrupt and so committed to his real goal of hanging out with rich guys that he didn’t pay much attention to the state. He was routinely pilloried by Progressives and the Progressive movement was fairly strong in the state of Washington. So he did not get reappointed despite his desires to still hang in DC.

Upon his return to Washington, Ankeny went back to his banking and pretty much continued with that up until his death. That took place in 1921. He was 76 years old.

So yeah, pretty hacktackular.

Levi Ankeny is buried in Mountain View Cemetery, Walla Walla, Washington.

If you would like this series to visit other senators sent to Washington in the 1902-03 cycle, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Boies Penrose is in Philadelphia and Lee Overman is in Salisbury, North Carolina. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.