Roger C. Weightman

Roger C. Weightman

Roger Chew Weightman (born January 18, 1787 in Alexandria , Virginia , †  February 2, 1876 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician . Between 1824 and 1827 he was mayor of Washington city.

Career

In 1800 Roger Weightman came to Washington, where he completed an apprenticeship in the printing trade. Seven years later he bought his own printing company and from then on worked as a printer for the congress . He also ran other businesses in Washington over the years. He also became a member of the local militia. When the British took Washington during the British-American War in 1814 , he was briefly captured.

The party affiliation Weightmans is not recorded. Between 1817 and 1824 he was a member of the Washington City Council. In 1822 he ran unsuccessfully against Thomas Carbery for the office of mayor of his hometown. The choice was so close that he sued unsuccessfully for two years against the result. After the death of Mayor Samuel Nicholas Smallwood on September 30, 1824, he was appointed by the city council as his successor. By June 1826 he ended his predecessor's term of office. Then he himself was elected mayor for two years against Thomas Carbery. During this time, among other things, the celebrations for the 50th return of American independence and the funeral services for John Adams and Thomas Jefferson , who both died on the very day of the jubilee, July 4, 1826, took place. Jefferson's last letter before his death was addressed to Weightman. In it he thanked for the invitation to the celebrations, which he had to decline for health reasons. It is also worth noting that until 1871 the mayor of Washington did not administer the entire District of Columbia . The then independent city of Georgetown provided its own mayor until 1871.

In 1827 Roger Weightman resigned prematurely to take up a position at Washington Bank . He was succeeded on June 11, 1827 by Joseph Gales . Weightman was a founding member of the Washington National Monument Society . In 1850 he ran unsuccessfully for his old office as mayor of the federal capital. From 1851 he worked for the Federal Patent Office . At the outbreak of the Civil War , President Abraham Lincoln made him Brevet Major General of the Militia with the task of reforming the militia. Weightman, who was also a Freemason , died in Washington on February 2, 1876.

Web links

• Roger C. Weightman in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• The Political Graveyard

predecessor	Office	successor
Samuel Nicholas Smallwood	Mayor of Washington 1824–1827	Joseph Gales