Howard Mason Gore

Howard Mason Gore was an American politician. He served as the 8th secretary of agriculture from 1924 to 1925 during the administration of President Calvin Coolidge. He served as the 17th governor of West Virginia from 1925 to 1929.

Biography

Gore was born in Harrison County, West Virginia, to farmer Solomon Deminion Gore and his wife Marietta Payne. Gore attended West Virginia University in 1900. He married the former Roxalene Corder Bailey on September 30, 1906. She died on March 7, 1928, and he remained a widower in office.
Gore served as president of the West Virginia Livestock Association from 1912 until 1916. He was appointed to the West Virginia State Board of Education from 1920 until 1925. He was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture from September 17, 1923, to November 21, 1924. On November 22, 1924, Gore served briefly as the secretary of agriculture following the death of his predecessor, Henry Cantwell Wallace.
On November 4, 1924, Gore was elected governor of West Virginia in the 1924 election. He assumed the governorship at the end of the partial first term of President Calvin Coolidge on March 4, 1925. Gore was appointed to serve as the West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture starting in February 1931, caused by the death of Commissioner John W. Smith. He left office in March 1933, after his successor was elected in the 1932 election.
He died in Clarksburg, West Virginia, on June 20, 1947. He is interred there in the Elkview Masonic Cemetery.