Luman Hamlin Weller

Luman Hamlin Weller (August 24, 1833 – March 2, 1914) was a United States Greenback Party member. In the 1880s, he served a single term in the United States House of Representatives as a representative of Iowa's 4th congressional district, then in rural northeastern Iowa. Once elected, he became nationally known as "Calamity" Weller, and did not survive his next election. He later went on to become one of the leading Populists in Iowa.

Weller was born in Bridgewater, Connecticut. He attended the public school in New Britain, Connecticut and attended the Suffield Literary Institute, Connecticut. He worked as a farmer, justice of the peace, and a private practice lawyer.

In 1882, Weller upset sitting Republican congressman Thomas Updegraff in the race to represent Iowa's 4th congressional district in Congress. Weller's win was assisted by several unusual events. Redistricting in 1881 had required Updegraff to run in a district that included only four counties from his former district. The Democratic candidate had dropped out of the race and thrown his support to Weller. Weller benefited from a nationwide wave of anti-Republican sentiment that would cost the party control of the U.S. House and one-fifth of its seats in that chamber. However, no other Greenback candidate won a seat in the Forty-eighth Congress, and Weller owed his election to support from the Democrats in his district, who had endorsed his candidacy. So it was only natural that he would enter the Democratic caucus in the House and support its candidate for Speaker of the House. His reward, such as it was, was a seat on the War Claims Committee and on the Agriculture Committee—neither of which he had wanted; his hope had been a spot on Banking and Currency, where he could have had the vantage point for attacking "the infamous national banking system."

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