Funston, Edward Hogue, member of Congress, was born in Clark county, Ohio, Sept. 16, 1836, a son of Frederick and Julia (Stafford) Funston. His parents were of Irish descent and well educated for the day in which they lived. With the other members of his family, Edward shared the hardships and privations incident to pioneer life in the middle west. He was given a reasonably fair country school education, attending school until he was thirteen years old, when he hired out to a farmer for the summer but attended school in the winter. For three years he worked and studied in this way, until he qualified himself to enter New Carlisle Academy. At the age of twenty he became a country school teacher and thus obtained means to attend Marietta College for two years. He did not graduate, but later had the degree of Master of Arts conferred upon him by the college. In 1861 he entered the Sixteenth Ohio battery and took part in the principal actions along the Mississippi river, until mustered out of the service in 1865. In 1867 he came to Kansas and located on a prairie farm in Carlyle township, Allen county. He was elected to the state legislature in 1873, was reëlected at each of the two succeeding annual elections, and was speaker of the house the last year. In 1880, he was elected to the state senate and served as president pro-tempore of that body. After four years in the state senate, he was elected to Congress on March 1, 1884, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Dudley C. Haskell, and was reëlected at each succeeding election until 1892, when he was defeated by a fusion of the Democratic and Populist parties. He was given the certificate of election, but his seat was contested by Horace L. Moore, and he was unseated on Aug. 2, 1894. Mr. Funston died at his home in Iola, Kan., Sept. 10, 1911.