Political career

Gerry was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Rhode Island's 2nd District as a Democrat from 1913 to 1915.^[5] He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1914,^[6] but he was elected to the United States Senate in 1916 and served from 1917 to 1929. He was the first United States senator from Rhode Island elected by popular vote rather than by the state senate. He was also the first Rhode Island Democrat United States senator to serve since 1859.^[7]

From 1919 to 1929, Gerry was the Democratic Whip. He has been described as a "Wilsonian Moralist".^{[citation needed]} In 1928 he was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election, but in 1934 he was again elected to the U.S Senate over the man who had defeated him six years earlier. He was not a candidate for re-election in 1946 and served until 1947.^[3]

Despite the great divide between Democrats and Republicans during his first stint in the Senate, he appeared open to a cordial relationship with the Majority Whip, Senator Charles Curtis, who later became Senate Majority Leader and Vice President.^[8]

First marriage

In 1910, Gerry married Mathilde Scott Townsend (1885–1949), the daughter of Richard H. Townsend (1850–1902), the President of the Erie and Pittsburgh Railroad, and the granddaughter of William Lawrence Scott (1828–1891), a Pennsylvania railroad and coal magnate who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. They did not have children and divorced in 1925. Later that same year, Mathilde married Sumner Welles (1892–1961), who was seven years her junior, and who had divorced his wife, Esther Slater, in 1923.^[9] At the time, rumors circulated around Washington that Sumner and Mathilde were having an affair that wrecked both their marriages.^[9]

Second marriage

On October 22, 1925, Gerry married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser (1873–1958), the widow of George Washington Vanderbilt II (1862–1914).^[10][11] Edith, a daughter of Maj. George Warren Dresser, was the mother of Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt (1900–1976), who married John Francis Amherst Cecil, son of Lord William Cecil and Mary Rothes Margaret Tyssen-Amherst, 2nd Baroness Amherst of Hackney.^[12][13]

Death

Gerry died on October 31, 1957, in Providence, Rhode Island. His elder brother, Robert Livingston Gerry, died several hours later in Delhi, New York.^[3] He was buried at St James Cemetery, Hyde Park, New York. His widow died on December 21, 1958.^[14]