Frederick Van Nuys
American politician (1874-1944)
Frederick Rollin Van Nuys (April 16, 1874 – January 25, 1944) was a United States senator from Indiana. Born in Falmouth, he attended the public schools and graduated from Earlham College (Richmond, Indiana) in 1898 and from Indiana Law School (now Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law) in 1900. He was admitted to the bar in 1900 and commenced practice in Shelbyville moving shortly afterward to Anderson. From 1906 to 1910 he was prosecuting attorney of Madison County and was a member of the Indiana Senate from 1913 to 1916, serving as president pro tempore in 1915. He moved to Indianapolis in 1916 and continued the practice of law; he was United States Attorney for the U.S. District of Indiana from 1920 to 1922.
According to an interview in The Literary Digest, he pronounced his last name "van-NIECE".
He was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1932, soundly defeating longtime incumbent and Majority Leader James Eli Watson. He was an opponent of the Eighteenth Amendment and called for changes to the Volstead Act. In 1937, he joined with Senator Robert F. Wagner in introducing an anti-lynching bill in the Senate. The House of Representatives passed a similar numbered bill (HR 1507) by a wide 277–120 margin.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Frederick Van Nuys” is american politician (1874-1944). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Frederick, Nuys and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1453047. VIAF identifies the subject as 18863411. The Library of Congress control number is n91085603. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1874, 1944, 1898 and 1900.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frederick Van Nuys” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.