36 MARYLAND MANUAL.

MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES OF 1896.

SPEAKER:

HON. SYDNEY E. MUDD, of Charles County.

Sydney E. Mudd, Republican, a son of the late Jeremiah T.
Mudd, a prosperous farmer of Charles county, was born on his
father's farm, near Bryantown, February 12th, 1858. He was
educated at Georgetown University and St. John's College,
Annapolis, and graduated from the latter institution in 1878.
He then took a special law course at the University of Virginia,,
and was admitted to the bar in 1880. He had hardly attained
his majority before he began to take prominent part in the local
Republican politics of Charles county, and was elected on the
Republican ticket to the House of Delegates in 1879, when only
twenty-one years of age. He was re-elected to the same office
two years later. He was also one of the Garfield electors in
1880. From 1882 to 1888 he was engaged in the practice of
law, and was active as a political worker. He was nominated on
the Republican ticket as Representative from the fifth Maryland
district in Congress in 1888, running against Barnes Compton,
the Democratic candidate. The election was very close, and
although Mr. Compton was elected by a few votes, on the face of
the returns, Mr. Mudd instituted a contest for the seat before the
Fifty-first Congress, and was seated. Mr. Mudd was the nomi-
nee of his party for re-election to the House of Representatives
in the campaign of 1890, and Mr. Compton was again the nom-
inee of the Democrats. This was the year of the great Demo-
cratic tidal wave, and Mr. Compton was elected by a large vote.

In 1893, Mr. Mudd was the Republican nominee for State
Senator from Charles county and prosecuted a vigorous canvass.
At the local elections in Charles that year there was much dis-
affection in both parties, growing out of the county seat agita-
tion, and nothing like a party vote was cast. Dr. L. C. Carrico,
Mr. Mudd's Democratic opponent, was successful by eleven votes.
In the campaign of last fall ex-Congressman Mudd succeeded in
bringing order and harmony to his party, that had been badly
shattered by the county seat fight of last June, and, with a united
front, it gave the Democrats a bad defeat at the polls. Mr.
Mudd was at the head of the ticket for the House of Delegates
and received the largest vote of any candidate. Mr. Mudd is
chairman of the Republican county committee.

He was married to Miss Ida Griffin, of Prince George's
county, in 1882, and has four children. He resides in Bryan-
town. He was selected at the first ballot in the Republican