page_title: John Eugene Osborne
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: John Eugene Osborne / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Selina Smith, the wife of John Eugene Osborne
context_page_description: John Eugene Osborne was an American physician, farmer, banker, and politician who served as the 3rd Governor of Wyoming and United States Representative as a member of the Democratic Party.
context_section_description: Osborne was a free silver supporters and during the 1896, 1900, and 1908 presidential elections he supported William Jennings Bryan. In 1896 he served as chairman of the Wyoming delegation to the Democratic National Convention, in 1898 he served as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was made a member of the national committee in 1900, and served as the vice chairman of the finance committee in 1908. During the 1904 presidential election Bryan suggested that somebody like Osborne from the western United States should run for the Democratic nomination, but Osborne chose not to run.
  On April 28, 1903, Governor DeForest Richards died in office shortly after winning reelection in 1902 resulting in a special election. Osborne won the Democratic nomination by acclamation, but was defeated in a landslide in the special election by Bryant Butler Brooks.
  On November 2, 1907, he married Selina Smith of Princeton, Kentucky after they met on the island of Madeira when Jean Curtis Smith was on a round-the-world trip with her sister and brother-in-law. According to an account in the Passenger-Inquirer of Owensboro, Kentucky, "they were engaged to be married when they landed on American soil two months later." Their honeymoon was interrupted "when his efforts to secure the 1908 Democratic National Convention for the West met with success and they were obliged to hurry to [Denver," where it was to be held. Mrs. Osborne was known as the "official hostess" for the convention.
  In 1910, he served as chairman of the Wyoming Democratic Party. Osborne was appointed Assistant Secretary of State by President Woodrow Wilson and served in his administration from  April 21, 1913 until December 14, 1915. He was also chairman of the board of the Rawlins National Bank, and engaged in stock raising. In 1913, he suggested that the remains of Christopher Columbus should be placed on a battleship and travel through the Panama Canal as a part of its opening ceremony. During the 1936 presidential election he was selected as one of the three Democratic presidential electors for Wyoming and vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Nance Garner when the electoral college convened.
  Osborne was a Freemason and a member of the York Rite. On March 2, 1942, his wife died in Louisville, Kentucky. On April 24, 1943, Osborne died in Rawlins, Wyoming at age 84 after suffering a heart attack earlier in the week. He was interred at the Smith family plot at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Princeton, Kentucky.
caption: Selina Smith
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