Stokes, J. William
agriculturist, congressman, was born in 1853 in Orangeburg county, S. C. He was brought up to farm life, attending the ordinary schools of his county and town until he was nineteen years of age; graduated from Washington and Lee university, Virginia, in 1876, and taught school for twelve years, graduating meantime in medicine from Vanderbilt university, Tennessee; in 1889 he returned to the farm, assisted in arganizing the farmers, and was president of the State Farmers' alliance two terms; was elected to the state senate in 1890; was a delegate at large to the national democratic convention at Chicago in 1892, and was presidential elector on the democratic ticket the same year; in 1894 was nominated without opposition in the democratic primaries in the new seventh congressional district. He received the certificate of election to the fifty-fourth congress, but the seat was declared vacant. At the election on Nov. 3, 1896, he was elected to the short term of the fiftyfourth congress; was re-elected to the fifty-fifth congress as a democrat, receiving 8,065 votes against 1,342 votes for T. B. Johnson, regular republican.