Lucius Fayette Clark Garvin was a physician. Also he was a member of the legislature, and 48th governor of Rhode Island from 1903 to 1905.
Background
Lucius Fayette Clark Garvin was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Only by chance of birth, however, was he a Southerner. Except for a certain courtliness of manner, which is traditionally held to be a Southern attribute, he was in every sense a New Englander.
His mother, Sarah Ann Gunn, was the daughter of Dr. Luther Gunn of Pittsfield, Massachusets; his father, James Garvin, was a native of Bethel, Vermont.
A teacher of unusual gifts, the latter had left the North to become a professor in East Tennessee College. In 1846, at the age of thirty-seven, he died of fever. His widow with her two sons moved to Greensboro, North Carolina.
Education
At Greensboro, North Carolina, Lucius, the younger boy, became a pupil in the Friends’ School. Here he prepared for Amherst College, from which he was graduated with distinction in 1862.
Later, he entered the Harvard Medical School, from which he was graduated in 1867.
Career
In November, 1862, Lucius joined the Union army as private in Company E of the 51st Massachusetts Regiment, seeing service in North Carolina and probably fighting against some of his boyhood friends and neighbors.
On his discharge in 1863, he decided to adopt his grandfather Gunn’s profession, and spent a short time as assistant in the office of Dr. Sylvanus Clapp of Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
He began his active practise at once in Lonsdale, a Rhode Island mill village, which was to be his home for the rest of his life.
From his college days, Garvin had been keenly interested in economic and social problems, and about 1881, he came upon Henry George’s book, Progress and Poverty. It converted him immediately and without reserve to the theory of Single Tax.
He was naturally a man of warm enthusiasms, and now, undeterred by ridicule and discouragements, he became the eager champion of an idea which he believed to be the solution of the most pressing problems of the day.
Allying himself with the Democratic party, in 1883, he was elected to the General Assembly.
Here he served thirteen terms, as well as three terms as state senator. Five times, he was Democratic candidate for Congress - in 1894, 1896, 1898, 1900, and 1906 - and four times for governor - from 1901 to 1905.
He never missed an opportunity to speak or write in behalf of Single Tax, and between the years 1903 and 1918 contributed a number of articles on topics connected with Single Tax, labor problems, and state government to the Independent, the Arena, the North American Review, the Providence Journal, and other periodicals.
His interest in public affairs did not abate with the years, and he also remained active in his profession. He served as state senator in 1921-22, and was a candidate for re-election at the time of his death which came very suddenly at the age of eighty-one.
Achievements
Politics
Garvin's devotion to the cause of Single Tax did not deter him from being the untiring advocate of less radical reforms. His career as a legislator was marked by constant agitation for measures intended to increase the welfare of the workingman.
Membership
He was a member of the legislature.
Personality
As a physician, Garvin achieved a good measure of success, though of necessity the majority of his patients were people of small means, and he never attained any degree of wealth. This, however, was of small concern to him, since his tastes were of the simplest.
For his own aggrandizement, he would never have sought public life, but anxious to be heard, he henceforth made himself an active figure in the public life of Rhode Island.
His unquestioned integrity made him the natural choice of those who wished a change of regime, but unfortunately, since the governor in Rhode Island has little power, a hostile Senate was able to nullify his efforts for betterment.
He was nevertheless glad, as a self-appointed preacher of a cherished doctrine, to use the conspicuous platform which the governorship afforded him.
Connections
Garvin was twice married: on December 23, 1869, to Lucy Waterman Southmayd of Middletown, Conn. , who died in 1898; and on April 2, 1907, to Sarah Emma Tomlinson of Lonsdale, Rhode Island.