[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 73 (Friday, May 21, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E942]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




REPLANTING OF TREE MEMORIALIZING THE LATE REPRESENTATIVE JOSEPH TAGGART 
                         OF KANSAS CITY, KANSAS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DENNIS MOORE

                               of kansas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 20, 2004

  Mr. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I recently had the honor of working with the 
Architect of the Capitol to replant on the east Capitol grounds a pin 
oak memorializing the late U.S. Representative Joe Taggart of Kansas 
City, Kansas.
  Representative Joe Taggart was elected three times to Congress from a 
House district including Kansas City, Kansas--in a 1911 special 
election, and then in regular elections in 1912 and 1914. Born in rural 
Iowa in 1867, Joe Taggart moved to Kansas during his childhood and 
graduated from Salina Normal University in 1890; after teaching school 
for two years in Bavaria, Kansas, he was admitted to the practice of 
law in 1893 in Salina, moving shortly thereafter to Kansas City. 
Taggart served as Kansas City's prosecuting attorney from 1907-1911, 
when he was elected as a Democrat to fill the vacancy caused by the 
death of Alexander Mitchell. Twice re-elected, he was defeated in 1916. 
During the First World War, Taggart served in the quartermaster corps 
of the United States Army. After the war, he resumed private law 
practice in Kansas City and was appointed judge of the Kansas Court of 
Industrial Relations in 1924. Joe Taggart died in Wadsworth, Kansas, in 
1938 and is buried in Atchison.
  In approximately 1916, Representative Taggart and his family planted 
a pin oak in his honor on the east lawn of the Capitol. The Architect 
of the Capitol has generously provided me with several prints of photos 
of that event. This tree survived, although in declining condition, 
until the area was leveled in order to construct the Capitol Visitors' 
Center. The staff of the Architect of the Capitol, led by Senior 
Landscape Architect and Horticulturist Matthew Evans, recently planted 
here on the Capitol grounds, near Independence Avenue, Southeast, a 
young pin oak to replace the earlier Taggart memorial tree. I also want 
to acknowledge the generous support of the Kansas Society of 
Washington, D.C.; thanks to the support of the Society's current 
president Heather Wingate and past presidents David Kensinger and Alan 
Sobba, the Kansas Society donated the cost of the new tree.
  The replanting of the Joseph Taggart memorial tree serves as a small 
reminder of the state of Kansas on the grounds of our U.S. Capitol and 
I am pleased to have been a part of this event.

                          ____________________