Prentiss Mellen

Prentiss Mellen

Prentiss Mellen (born October 11, 1764 in Sterling , Province of Massachusetts Bay , †  December 31, 1840 in Portland , Maine ) was an American lawyer and politician ( Federal Party ) who represented the state of Massachusetts in the US Senate .

Prentiss Mellen, son of a clergyman, graduated from Harvard University in 1784 and subsequently studied law , after which he was admitted to the bar in 1788. After that he began in his hometown of Sterling, in Bridgewater and in Dover ( New Hampshire to practice as a lawyer). In 1791 he settled in Biddeford in what is now Maine as a lawyer before he lived in Portland from 1806, which at that time was also part of Massachusetts.

From 1808 to 1809 Mellen was a member of the Governor's Council , an eight-member body that advises the Governor of Massachusetts. In the presidential election of 1816 he was elector of the Massachusetts victorious federalist Rufus King in Electoral College ; but the majority of the vote was won by James Monroe of the Democratic Republicans .

In 1817 Mellen became a curator of Bowdoin College , Brunswick , which he remained until 1836. During this time he also entered the US Senate as a representative of Massachusetts. He succeeded the resigned Eli P. Ashmun on June 5, 1818 and remained in Congress until May 15, 1820 . That day he resigned himself to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the newly admitted Maine state. Mellen held this post until his resignation in 1834. Then he was in 1838 still a commission to revise the Maine Code before he retired into private life and died in Portland in 1840.

Web links

• Prentiss Mellen in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Prentiss Mellen in the database of Find a Grave (English)