Representative George Lewis Yaple

George Lewis Yaple (February 20, 1851 – December 16, 1939) was a politician and jurist from the U.S. state of Michigan who served one term in the United States House of Representatives and later sat for many years as a circuit judge. He was born in Leonidas, St. Joseph County, Michigan, and in 1857 moved with his parents to Mendon, Michigan, where he was raised. He attended the local common schools and later Albion College in Albion, Michigan, before pursuing higher education in the Midwest.

Yaple enrolled at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, from which he graduated in 1871. He undertook a postgraduate course there, completing it in 1874, while simultaneously preparing for a legal career. He studied law with a local attorney, following the customary apprenticeship model of the period, and was admitted to the bar in 1872. Despite his legal qualification, he initially devoted himself to agriculture, farming near Mendon until 1877, when he commenced the active practice of law in Mendon, building a professional reputation that would later support his entry into public life.

Yaple’s political career began in the context of the post–Civil War realignment and the rise of third-party movements. He became associated with the Greenback Party, which advocated monetary reform and relief for farmers and laborers. In 1880 he was an unsuccessful Greenback candidate for election to the Forty-seventh Congress from Michigan. Undeterred, he continued his political efforts and, in 1882, ran as a Fusion candidate—a coalition of Democrats and Greenbackers—against incumbent Republican Julius C. Burrows in Michigan’s 4th congressional district. In that election he defeated Burrows and was elected to the Forty-eighth Congress, serving from March 4, 1883, to March 3, 1885. Although elected on a Fusion ticket, Yaple aligned himself with the Democratic Party in Washington and sat with the Democrats in Congress.

During his single term in the House of Representatives, Yaple served at a time when issues of tariff policy, currency, and agricultural distress were central to national debate, and his Fusion background reflected the agrarian and reform currents of his district. In 1884 he sought reelection as a Fusion candidate to the Forty-ninth Congress but was unsuccessful, losing the rematch to Julius C. Burrows. His defeat marked the end of his brief tenure in national office but not of his broader political ambitions in Michigan.

Yaple remained active in state politics and continued to be identified with reform and Democratic causes. In 1886 he was again nominated as a Fusion candidate, this time for Governor of Michigan. In the general election he was defeated by the Republican nominee, Cyrus G. Luce. He subsequently served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1888, participating in the party’s national deliberations. Yaple made two further attempts to return to Congress, running again in Michigan’s 4th district; he lost to Julius C. Burrows in 1890 and to Republican Henry F. Thomas in 1892, reflecting the continued strength of the Republican Party in the state during that period.

Turning increasingly to the law, Yaple was elected circuit judge of the fifteenth judicial circuit of Michigan in 1894. He served on the bench from 1894 until 1911, presiding over a wide range of civil and criminal matters in a largely rural region of the state. His long judicial tenure established him as a prominent legal figure in southwestern Michigan and marked a transition from partisan electoral politics to a more neutral role in public service. His work as a circuit judge coincided with a period of economic and social change in Michigan, including the growth of industry and evolving legal questions related to property, labor, and local governance.

In his later years, Yaple’s political affiliation shifted. In 1916 he became a member of the Republican Party, a notable change from his earlier identification with the Greenback and Democratic-Fusion movements. After retiring from the bench, he continued to reside in Mendon, Michigan, where he had spent most of his life. George Lewis Yaple died in Mendon on December 16, 1939. He was interred in Mendon Cemetery, Mendon, Michigan, closing a long life that spanned from the antebellum era through the Great Depression and encompassed service as a farmer, lawyer, congressman, and judge.