Christopher Harrison

Christopher Harrison

Christopher Harrison (born August 29, 1775 in Dorchester County , Province of Maryland , †  April 4, 1862 in Talbot County , Maryland ) was an American politician . Between 1816 and 1818 he was lieutenant governor of the state of Indiana .

Career

Christopher Harrison was born in Maryland into a wealthy family who ran a large plantation with the help of slaves . He attended St. John College in Annapolis and then worked for William Patterson, President of the Bank of Baltimore . After an affair with Patterson's daughter, he left Maryland around 1808. He moved to Hanover in what is now Indiana, where he lived in a log cabin for five years. In 1814 he helped found the Farmers and Mechanics Bank in Madison . In 1815 he moved to Salem , also in the Indiana Territorywhere he and a partner sold haberdashery. During one term he was a judge in Washington County there . Politically, he joined the Democratic Republican Party .

After Indiana joined the Union, Harrison was elected lieutenant governor of the new state alongside Jonathan Jennings in 1816 . He held this office between December 7, 1816 and his resignation on December 17, 1818. He was Deputy Governor and Chairman of the State Senate . During this time there was tension between Harrison and Jennings. Harrison represented the governor in his absence when he negotiated with the indigenous Indian tribes on behalf of the federal government. When Jennings returned, Harrison insisted on remaining governor believing Jennings had broken the constitution by accepting a federal mandate. A court ruling upheld Jennings and angry Harrison resigned. Ratliff Boon was then elected to succeed him as Lieutenant Governor.

In 1819, Christopher Harrison ran unsuccessfully for governor. In 1821 he became a member of a commission to move the state capital to the new city of Indianapolis . He then went back to Salem, where he worked, among other things, as a portrait painter. In 1834 he returned home to Maryland, where he took over the family plantation and released the slaves there. He died on April 4, 1862. Harrison was not related to the well-known Indiana Harrison family .

Web links

• Christopher Harrison in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• The Political Graveyard