Background
Born on February 11, 1860 near Gate City, Virginia in Scott County Hale was the son of Drayton Smithton and Ruth C. Frazier Hale.
Born on February 11, 1860 near Gate City, Virginia in Scott County Hale was the son of Drayton Smithton and Ruth C. Frazier Hale.
He attended the common schools of Nicholasville, Virginia and Kingsley Academy near Kingsport, Tennessee.
Hale taught school at Hale"s Mill, Virginia in 1876. He moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1878 and engaged in the nursery business as well as the wholesale dry goods business, banking, and farming. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination in 1902 as a Representative to the Fifty-eighth Congress.
Elected as a Republican to the Fifty-ninth and Sixtieth Congresses, Hale served from March 4, 1905 to March 3, 1909.
He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1908 to the Sixty-first Congress. In 1909, he moved to Los Angeles, California and engaged in the oil and real estate business until his death.
On September 16, 1941, Hale died in Alhambra, California at age 81 years, 217 days. He is interred at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.
He served as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from 1891 to 1893. He was a member of the Tennessee Senate from 1893 to 1895. Hale was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1908 and a member of the Republican National Committee from 1908 to 1912.