Dingley, Nelson, an American legislator; born in Durham, Me., Feb. 15, 1832; received a high school education; taught school until 1851; studied at Waterville College (now Colby University), and later at Dartmouth College, and was graduated at the latter in 1853; admitted to the bar in 1856; purchased the Lewiston "Journal" in 1856; added a daily edition in 1865; and was its editor and proprietor till his death. He was elected to the State Legislature in 1861; served in that body till 1865 and in 1868 and 1873, and was Speaker of the House in 1864-1865. He was elected governor of Maine in 1873 and reëlected in 1874; and was a member of Congress from 1881 till his death. From the beginning of his Congressional career he was consipicuous as an advocate of the principle of protection and was author of the Dingley Tariff Bill of 1897. In 1879 he was appointed a member of the Joint High Commission. He died in Washington, D.C., Jan. 13, 1899.
Entry from Everybody's Cyclopedia, 1912.