Several sources list him as the first American Indian elected to the Minnesota Legislature. This is not true, there were others who served before him.
"DeGroat is a descendant of the East Coast Brotherton tribe...he was born on the Morton Indian Reservation and grew up on the White Earth Reservation." (Session Weekly, April 28, 1989, p. 7)
"Upon filing for election, [in 1962] DeGroat announced he would be a Conservative candidate saying, 'I am a Conservative. There is a need for conservative practices in government, for sound fiscal government.'...Though he consistently caucused with conservatives, he regarded himself as an independent. ...by 1974...DeGroat had reluctantly joined the Republican rank and file." (Fargo-Moorhead Forum, August 13, 1989)
He was a member of the Republican Party.
He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Minnesota Senate in the 1976 election.
He was an unsuccessful unendorsed Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives in the 1980 election.
He died, of cancer, in a hospital in Fargo, North Dakota.
Religion provided by the Catholic Bulletin, 3/21/1975.