John Holmes (politician, 1773)

John Holmes

John Holmes (born March 14, 1773 in Kingston , Plymouth County , Massachusetts Bay Province, †  July 7, 1843 in Portland , Maine ) was an American politician who represented the state of Maine in the US Senate .

After attending school in Kingston, John Holmes continued his education at the College of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in Providence , now Brown University , and graduated there in 1796. He later studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1799, after which he began to practice in Alfred . At this time he was also active as a writer.

Holmes' political career began with the election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives , to which he belonged from 1802 to 1803 and in 1812. A term in the Massachusetts Senate followed between 1813 and 1814. In 1816 he was a member of a commission which, according to the Ghent Peace Treaty , undertook the division of the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay between the United States and the United Kingdom following the British-American War . In addition, Parliament entrusted him with the establishment of state prisons and the revision of the Massachusetts Criminal Code .

Also in 1816, John Holmes was elected to the United States House of Representatives for Massachusetts . There he remained from March 4, 1817 until his resignation on March 15, 1820. Within the Democratic Republican Party , he was one of the supporters of William Harris Crawford and John Quincy Adams . During his time as a Member of Parliament, he acted, among other things, as chairman of the Committee for the Control of Expenditures of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In the run-up to Maine's secession from Massachusetts, Holmes took part in the constitutional convention of the new state. After Maine joined the Union, he became one of the state's first two US Senators alongside John Chandler . He took his mandate from June 13, 1820 to March 3, 1827 and then resigned from the Senate, to which he returned on January 15, 1829 after the resignation of his successor Albion K. Parris ; in the meantime he had converted to the National Republican Party . Holmes ended Parris' term until March 3, 1833. As a senator he was, among other things, chairman of the finance committee and the pension committee.

After the end of his time in Congress , Holmes returned to work as a lawyer. From 1836 to 1837 he was still in the Maine House of Representatives before he was appointed federal attorney for the Maine District in 1841 . He held this office until his death on July 7, 1843.

Web links

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