Everett Colby

Everett Colby (December 10, 1874 – June 19, 1943) was a member of the New Jersey Assembly and the New Jersey Senate.

He was born in Milwaukee on December 10, 1874. The son of Charles L. Colby, builder of the Wisconsin Central Railroad, he inherited wealth and the associations of big business. He attended the Browning School. Browning said that Colby was a good sportsman, like others of his privileged class, but a poor scholar who had great difficulty concentrating or reading. He claimed that he stirred his desire for real work by teaching him woodwork. On leaving school, Colby attended Brown University where John D. Rockefeller was one of his classmates. He was still an avid sportsman and played tennis, golf, baseball and football and was football captain in his senior year. He graduated in 1897. His father died the next year and Everett made a tour of the world. He then studied law and played polo. He married and settled down in Llewellyn Park, Orange, New Jersey.

He became a Wall Street broker and entered politics. His father had campaigned in Wisconsin as a railroad man and Everett had become convinced, from an early age, that he would one day become a politician. With this end in mind, he had studied law and joined the debating society in college. He openly acknowledged that he enjoyed the showmanship of politics and was at first unsure of the course his political career would take. He simply wanted to go into politics–not to accomplish anything in particular. At first he served in minor positions, assisting other politicians and over time he developed his own political consciousness.

Colby became convinced that the American political system had become perverted from a representative democracy to a tyranny. He had been advised to gain experience by joining forces with Major Carl Lentz, the chairman of the Republican County Committee of Essex County. Lentz allowed him to be the introductory speaker at some meetings and Colby gained experience in giving speeches. He then transferred to the staff of Governor Voorhees. Voorhees appointed him a Commissioner on the State Board of Education. Colby worried that his own desultory education might make him unfit for the position but he did very well and Lentz made him chairman of the executive committee of the Republican organization of West Orange in 1902. The next year, Lentz encouraged Colby to run for state senator for Essex. When Colby pointed out that he was under the constitutional age for the senate, Lentz offered to "fix the Manual" where the statistics of legislators were kept. Colby refused but agreed to nomination for the State Assembly and was elected Assemblyman from Essex.

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