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LILLEY, George Leavens,
Governor Who Died in Office.
Governor Lilley, the sixty-third chief
magistrate of the Commonwealth, was
the first to die in office since the adoption
of the constitution of 1818. Short as was
his life, his death occurring before he had
completed his fiftieth year, it was filled
with the activities which spring from
earnestness of purpose and loyalty to
principle and to friends, and he left a
marked impress upon his time.
He was born in Oxford, "Worcester
county, Massachusetts, August 3, 1859,
son of John Leavens and Caroline Ward
(Adams) Lilley, and a descendant of
George Lilley, who settled in Reading,
Massachusetts, in 1636. His father, a
farmer and marketman, is described as ''a
bundle of nervous energy and activity ;"
his mother exerted a great moral force in
the life of her son. The lad followed his
common school studies with entrance to
the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but
his father's declining health obliged him
to leave at the end of the first year to take
charge of the home farm and interests
connected therewith, and these responsi-
bilities were further increased by the
death of the parent soon afterward. His
industries now became varied, but in their
midst he never lost sight of self-improvement,
and gave all his spare hours to
judicious reading, history being his espe-
cial delight. With his last dollar, he
chartered a schooner and voyaged to
Nova Scotia, returning with a cargo of
potatoes which he disposed of to good
advantage. Turning his attention to the
meat business, which had been among the
occupations of his boyhood under his
father, he made an engagement with the
meat packing firm of Swift & Company,
and opened a branch house in Worcester,
his name appearing first in that of the
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firm, and he developed this business to
great proportions. Later he took up his
residence in Waterbury Connecticut,
where he interested himself in real estate,
as he did also in Torrington and Winsted.
His public career dates from 1890, when
he came into prominence in Waterbury
for his unsparing criticism of the town
government's administration of its finan-
cial affairs. He was made the candidate
of the Republicans for the General As-
sembly, was elected, and on taking his
seat attracted the attention of the entire
State by his independence and straight-
forwardness as a member of the joint
committee on railroads. He secured the
enactment of a law consolidating the
town and city of Waterbury. He introduced
a bill to redistrict the State, in
order to secure the election of an addi-
tional Congressman, to which the State
was entitled by reason of increased popu-
lation. This bill failed of passage, but in
its stead was created the position of Congressman-at-Large,
and to this he was
elected by a substantial vote, followed by
two reelections. In the Fifty-eighth Con-
gress he served on the committee on ter-
ritories ; in the Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth
on the committee on national affairs ; and
for two sessions on the committee on expenditures
in the Post-Office Department.
He was also for a time a member of the
board of visitors to the United States
Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.
In 1904, Mr. Lilley was elected to
the Republican State Central Committee,
upon which he served until his death. In
1906, he was chairman of the Republican
State Convention. While in Congress,
for two terms, he represented his State
on the National Republican Congres-
sional Committee, and was a member of
its executive committee.
Elected Governor in 1908. he had been
seated less than three months when he