Senator Morgan Gardner Bulkeley

Morgan Gardner Bulkeley served as a Senator from Connecticut in the United States Congress from 1905 to 1911. A member of the Republican Party, Morgan Gardner Bulkeley contributed to the legislative process during 1 term in office.

Morgan Gardner Bulkeley’s service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history. As a member of the Senate, Morgan Gardner Bulkeley participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of constituents.

Morgan Gardner Bulkeley (December 26, 1837 – November 6, 1922) was an American politician of the Republican Party, businessman, and insurance executive. In 1876, he served as the first president of baseball’s National League and, because of that, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937, a choice that remains controversial, since his time as a baseball executive was short. Bulkeley was born in East Haddam, Connecticut. His father was Judge Eliphalet Adams Bulkeley, a prominent local lawyer and businessman, who became the first president of the Aetna Life Insurance Company. The family moved to Hartford, where Morgan Bulkeley was educated, before he took a job in the city of Brooklyn, New York. He served briefly in the American Civil War, where he saw no combat. When his father died in 1872, he moved back to Hartford and became a bank president and a board member of Aetna, becoming its president in 1879, a post he held the rest of his life. When the Hartford Dark Blues baseball team was asked to join the new National League in 1876, Bulkeley, the team president, was asked to become league president, despite having minimal baseball experience. He served one season, while most of the work was done by Chicago White Stockings owner William Hulbert. Bulkeley also served on the Hartford Common Council and in 1880 was elected to the first of four two-year terms as mayor of Hartford. Bulkeley was elected Governor of Connecticut, taking office in 1889. He was not renominated by the Republicans, but served a second two-year term because the houses of the state legislature could not agree on the outcome of the 1890 election. Holding over in office after the end of his elected term, he found the entry to the executive offices at the State House was locked against him; he had it opened with a crowbar, thus earning him the nickname “the Crowbar Governor”. He left office in 1893, and served one term as U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1905 to 1911. In his final years he remained involved with civic and philanthropic activities. After his death in 1922, several structures in Hartford, including a bridge and a high school, were named for him.