Attorney General: Thomas W. Gregory
Thomas Watt Gregory was born in Crawfordsville, Mississippi, on November 6, 1861. He graduated from Southwestern Presbyterian University in 1883. After studying law briefly at the University of Virginia, he transferred to the University of Texas, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws in 1885. He began the practice of law in Austin, Texas, that same year. For eight years, Gregory was a regent of the University of Texas. He declined appointment as assistant attorney general of Texas in 1892 as well as an appointment to the state bench in 1896. Gregory was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention at St. Louis in 1904 and was state delegate-at-large to the 1912 Baltimore Convention, where he led the Texas delegation in backing Woodrow Wilson’s candidacy. Gregory was appointed Special Assistant to the Attorney General in May 1913, in the investigation and proceedings against the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad Company.
President Woodrow Wilson appointed Gregory as Attorney General of the United States in August 1914, and he held that office until March 1919. Gregory was a member of Wilson’s Second Industrial Conference in 1919 and 1920. He died in New York City on February 26, 1933.
Born in Airolo, Switzerland, Adolfo Müller-Ury studied and exhibited in Rome, Munich, and Paris. He relocated to the United States in the late 1880s. His portraits include Pope Pius XII, Kaiser Wilhelm II, President William McKinley, and General Ulysses S. Grant. Müller-Ury's portrait of Attorney General Gregory was painted in 1919. He died in 1947.