John Brown (politician, 1757)

John Brown

John Brown (born September 12, 1757 in Staunton , Colony of Virginia , †  August 29, 1837 in Lexington , Kentucky ) was an American politician who represented the state of Virginia in the Continental Congress and in the House of Representatives and was one of the first two US Kentucky senators acted.

Life

John Brown, son of a Presbyterian clergyman who immigrated from Ireland , received a good education, but this was temporarily interrupted by military service during the War of Independence . He first attended the Augusta Academy in Lexington (now Washington and Lee University ), then the College of New Jersey , which later became Princeton University .

In 1778 his time at college ended when it ceased teaching due to the war. In the spring of 1780 he enrolled at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg , which he had to leave in the autumn after the British invasion of Virginia. After another brief period of service in the army, he ultimately completed his training at the Thomas Jeffersons law firm in Charlottesville . He was inducted into the bar and began practicing law in Danville .

politics

John Brown took his first political mandate in 1783 as a member of the Virginia Senate , of which he was a member until 1788. In 1787, the legislature of his state appointed him a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he remained until 1788. After the constitution went into effect , he was elected to the Virginia House of Representatives in the First and Second Congresses.

In Congress, Brown introduced the bill that made Kentucky, which was then part of Virginia, a state . When the law came into force, he resigned his mandate on June 1, 1792, to take office 17 days later with John Edwards as the first US Senator for Kentucky. He was re-elected twice and held the office of president pro tempore from December 1802 to October 1803 . During his time in the Senate, he joined the newly formed Democratic Republican Party .

Another résumé

After his time as a politician, John Brown returned to work as a lawyer in Frankfort . He served briefly as the sheriff of Franklin County and was on the board that oversaw the construction of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort. In 1836 he was chairman of the inaugural meeting of the Kentucky Historical Society.

John Brown, whose cousin John Breckinridge was also a Senator for Kentucky and US Treasury Secretary , died in Lexington in 1837. The house in which he spent the last few years of his life later became a National Historic Landmark under the name Liberty Hall and is now a museum.

Web links

• John Brown in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• John Brown in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Liberty Hall