Seargent Smith Prentiss

Seargent Smith Prentiss (born September 30, 1808 in Portland , Maine , † July 1, 1850 in Natchez , Mississippi ) was an American politician . Between 1838 and 1839 he represented the state of Mississippi in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Seargent Prentiss attended Gorham Academy in Maine and then until 1826 Bowdoin College in Brunswick . He then studied law first in Gorham and later in Cincinnati . After his admission to the bar in 1829 and a move to Mississippi, he began to work in his new profession in Vicksburg .

Politically, Prentiss became a member of the Whig Party . From 1836 to 1837 he was a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives . In the congressional elections of 1836, in which both of the Mississippi state representatives were elected nationwide, there were irregularities. In those elections, Samuel Jameson Gholson and John Claiborne had been elected to the US House of Representatives. Appeals were filed against both election results and on February 5, 1838, Congress declared the elections to be invalid. As a result, new elections were scheduled, in which Thomas J. Word and Seargent Prentiss were elected. Prentiss took up his mandate on May 30, 1838 and exercised it until the end of the legislative period on March 3, 1839. In the regular elections of 1838 he decided not to run again. Along with the simultaneously elected Thomas Word and Patrick W. Tompkins , who represented the third constituency of Mississippi in Congress between 1847 and 1849, Seargent Prentiss was one of only three Whigs ever elected to the US House of Representatives for Mississippi.

After his tenure in Congress, Seargent Prentiss returned to Vicksburg as a lawyer. In 1845 he moved to New Orleans , where he also practiced as a lawyer. Seargent Prentiss died on July 1, 1850 on the Longwood estate near Natchez and was buried in the private cemetery on the property.

Web links

• Seargent Smith Prentiss in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Sergeant Smith Prentiss in the database of Find a Grave (English)