Peleg Sprague (politician, 1793)

Peleg Sprague at the age of 51

Peleg Sprague (born April 27, 1793 in Duxbury , Plymouth County , Massachusetts , †  October 13, 1880 in Boston , Massachusetts) was an American lawyer and politician who represented the state of Maine in both chambers of Congress .

Peleg Sprague graduated from Harvard University in 1812 . He then studied in Litchfield ( Connecticut ) the law , was admitted to the Bar Association in August 1815 and started in the then part of Massachusetts still Augusta , now the capital of Maine, to practice as a lawyer. In 1817 he moved his office to Hallowell .

After the state of Maine was established, Sprague was elected to the House of Representatives, to which he belonged from 1821 to 1822. From March 4, 1825 to March 3, 1829, he was a member of the United States House of Representatives for the fourth constituency of Maine . He stepped down as MP to succeed John Chandler , who had previously resigned, as US Senator . He remained in this chamber until his resignation on January 1, 1835; During this time he was initially a member of the National Republican Party , from which the Whigs later emerged.

After leaving Congress, Sprague worked as a lawyer in Boston. Politically, he was only active once when he was a member of the Electoral College for the Whigs in the presidential election in 1840 and gave his vote to the then victorious Whig candidate William Henry Harrison . His successor as US President , John Tyler , nominated Sprague on July 15, 1841 as a judge in the federal district court for the Massachusetts district. He was confirmed by the Senate the following day, took office immediately and held it until March 13, 1865. That day he retired. Sprague died in Boston in 1880 and was buried in Cambridge .

Peleg Sprague was the grandfather of Congressman Charles F. Sprague (1857-1902). He was only closely related to the politician of the same name from the state of New Hampshire (1756-1800). John Sprague (approx. 1630–1676) was the ancestor of the two in the male line.

Web links

• Peleg Sprague in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Peleg Sprague in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Peleg Sprague. 1815-35  Chapter in: William Willis,  A history of the law, the courts, and the lawyers of Maine, from its first colonization to the early part of the present century  (1863)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Relationship Calculator: The Sprague Project. Retrieved February 19, 2012 .