ambitious in marriage. Crisp followed protocol and wrote a formal request to Mr. Burton. In later years, after Crisp had achieved distinction, Burton declared that his son-in-law had never written anything better. But at the time it was to no effect. Crisp requested that a friend ask Mr. Burton if they might be married at her home. Her parents refused, so they had to make other plans. Clara Bell's sister Ella assisted with her trousseau. One bright Sunday morning, when she was visiting her brother on the outskirts of Ellaville, Crisp drove Clara Bell in his buggy to his boarding place, and there in the presence of a few friends in the parlor, they were married. The next Sunday, Crisp and his wife joined the Methodist Church of Ellaville. Soon Clara Bell's parents reconciled with the couple, and he became the mainstay of their old age. They lived fifty-one years in the same house. Clara Bell, on her death-bed, said: "I cannot think what my life would have been without him... My father and mother came to love him very much. He has been the dearest, sweetest husband to me, and I have loved him better than anything else on earth." Crisp served as president of the Democratic gubernatorial convention at Atlanta, Georgia, in April 1883. he was elected a Democrat to the Forty-eighth and to the six succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1883, until his death. In Congress, he served as chairman of the Committee on Elections in the Fiftieth Congress, Committee on Rules in the Fifty-second and Fifty-third Congresses, and Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Fifty-second and Fifty-third Congresses. He had been nominated for United States Senator in the Georgia primary of 1896, but he died in Atlanta on October 23, 1896, and was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in his hometown of Americus. Georgia's Crisp County is named in his honor. Legacy As a former Speaker of the House, his portrait had been on display in the US Capitol. The portrait was removed from public display in the Speaker's Lobby outside the House Chamber after an order issued by the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi on June 18, 2020, due to Crisp having fought in the Confederate States Army. See also List of United States Congress members who died in office (1790–1899) Notes References Retrieved on 2008-02-13 Malone, Preston St. Clair.