Background
LUCE, Robert was born on December 2, 1862 in Auburn, Maine, United States. Son of Enos Thompson and Phoebe (Learned) Luce.
United States representative politician Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives
LUCE, Robert was born on December 2, 1862 in Auburn, Maine, United States. Son of Enos Thompson and Phoebe (Learned) Luce.
Born in Auburn, Maine, Luce attended the public schools of Auburn and Lewiston, Maine, and Somerville, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1882, then taught at Waltham High School for a year. He studied law and was admitted to the bar, but did not engage in extensive practice.
For the mathematical psychologist see Robert Duncan Luce
He engaged in journalism, founding and serving as president of the Luce’s Press Clipping Bureau in Boston and New York City. He served as president of the Republican State Convention in 1910. He was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1912.
He was a delegate to the State constitutional convention 1917–1919, and served as president of the Republican Club of Massachusetts in 1918. Luce was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-sixth and the seven succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1919 – January 3, 1935). He served as chairman of the Committee on Elections No.
2 (Sixty-seventh Congress), and the Committee on World War Veterans’ Legislation (Sixty-eighth Congress). Luce was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1934 to the Seventy-fourth Congress, but was elected to the Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Congresses (January 3, 1937 – January 3, 1941). He was again unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1940 to the Seventy-seventh Congress.
Luce resumed his former business pursuits, and died in Waltham on April 7, 1946. He was interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. For many years Luce owned the Walter S. and Melissa E. Barnes House in Somerville.
He was Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, and was an author, notably on the subject of political science. Along with Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota, he introduced the bill that became the Shipstead-Luce Act, which expanded the oversight of the United States Commission of Fine Arts to review of new structures on private property abutting federal land.
Member Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, 1917. Member 66th to 73d Congresses. (1919-1935), 13th Massachusetts District, 75th and 76th Congresses (1937-1941), 9th Massachusetts District.
Clubs: Republican of Massachusetts, Middlesex, Cosmos (Wahshington, District of Columbia).
Married Mabelle Clifton Farnham, September 21, 1885 (died January 27, 1926), Member.