Joseph Hayes Acklen was an American lawyer, plantation owner and politician who served two terms as a U.S. representative from Louisiana from 1878 to 1881.
Occupation
politician, ornithologist, lawyer, zoologist
Position held
United States representative
Citizenship
United States
Born
May 20, 1850
Died
September 28, 1938
Overview
Joseph Hayes Acklen (May 20, 1850 – September 28, 1938) was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Louisiana from 1878 to 1881.
Biography
Early life
Joseph Hayes Acklen was born in Nashville, Tennessee, to Adelicia and Joseph Alexander Smith Acklen, a wealthy couple whose summer home was located in Nashville, while he also grew up on plantations in Louisiana. He had a brother, William Hayes Ackland. During the American Civil War, his parents sided with the Confederacy, and the father fled to the family's Louisiana plantation, where he died in 1863.
He was educated by private tutors. He attended Burlington Military College, near Burlington, New Jersey, in 1864 and 1865, and graduated from two foreign institutions (École de Neuilly, Paris, and Swiss University, Vevey). He returned to the United States and graduated from Cumberland University's law school in Lebanon, Tennessee in 1871.
