George Chapman Sinton (1886-1976): from Lisburn ‘Old Scholar’ to US presidential elector

Chapman - photo

Thomas E. Dewey, Governor of New York and Republican presidential nominee, admiring Sinton’s tie at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, PA, 1948.
(FSL, Past and Present, 1948)

Around the time of US presidential elections, there is always a lot of talk about the so-called ‘Electoral College’ in determining the winner. This is the group that the American public elect to ultimately vote for the president and vice-president. A former member of the Electoral College was educated in Lisburn and had connections to Ulster’s linen industry.

George Chapman Sinton (1886-1976) was born at Tamnaghmore, near Laurelvale, Tandragee, Co. Armagh. He was the son of William Henry Sinton (1841-1912) and Lucy Chapman (1852-1933), and the family belonged to the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers. Following in the footsteps of other family members, he was admitted to the Quaker-managed Ulster Provincial School (now Friends’), Lisburn, in 1898.

George’s uncle was Thomas Sinton JP (1826-87), a spinning and linen manufacturer who built the village of Laurelvale, near where George was born, for the workforce. After completing his education in Lisburn and becoming an ‘Old Scholar’, George briefly worked in Thomas Sinton Ltd. along with his cousins. However, it was not to his liking and in 1907 he decided to ‘run away from the linen business’ by emigrating to the United States of America.

Laurelvale mill - photo

The Laurelvale factory of Thomas Sinton Ltd., where George briefly worked before emigrating to the USA. (public domain image)
The company also had mills at Tandragee and Killyleagh.

He began a new life in the western state of Montana, where he started off as a grocer’s delivery clerk in Helena, the state’s capital. His pursuit of the ‘American Dream’ saw George’s rise to become owner of a bank at Pompeys Pillar by 1928 and 50,000-acre ranch at Manhattan by 1930. The ranch was so large that an aeroplane was used to find lost cattle! He provided employment to a few men and women from his native province, and noted that, ‘No set of people in the world has succeeded in the West to the same extent as the Ulsterfolk.’

A member of the Republican Party, the public first voted him in as a presidential elector for Montana in 1928. He was for many years America’s longest-serving presidential elector, known by the title ‘Dean of the Electoral College’. A friend of President Herbert Hoover, a fellow Quaker, he was allegedly offered but declined the position of Secretary of Agriculture in Hoover’s administration in 1929. In 1960, he was elected chairman of Montana’s Republican Finance Committee.

George died in 1976 and is buried in Meadow View Cemetery, Manhattan, MT, alongside his wife Kittie née Rybolt (1891-1990).

George features as an ‘Old Scholar’ in our exhibition, Lisburn’s Quaker School: 250 years of Friends’ (ends Jan. 2025).

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