Tristam Burges

Tristam Burges (born February 26, 1770 in Rochester , Plymouth County , Province of Massachusetts Bay , † October 13, 1853 in a suburb of Providence , Rhode Island ) was an American politician . Between 1825 and 1835 he represented the state of Rhode Island in the US House of Representatives .

Career

Tristam Burges was the great-great-uncle of Theodore F. Green , who was governor of Rhode Island from 1933 to 1936 and represented this state in the US Senate from 1937 to 1961 . He attended the public schools in his home country and then dropped out of medical school after the death of his father. He then studied until 1796 at Brown University in Providence. After a subsequent law degree and his admission to the bar in 1799, he began to work in Providence in his new profession.

Politically, he was a member of the Federalist Party at the time . In 1811 he was elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives. In 1815 he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of his state. He then taught rhetoric at Brown University. In the 1820s Burges joined the opposition to later President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party and in the 1830s became a member of the Whig Party that emerged from this opposition .

In 1824 Burges was elected to the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC . There he replaced Samuel Eddy on March 4, 1825, whom he had defeated in the election. After four re-elections, he was able to complete five legislative terms in Congress by March 3, 1835 . Between 1825 and 1827 he chaired the committee that dealt with pensions for veterans of the American Revolution; from 1825 to 1829 he was also a member of the committee for the pension provision of the military. In addition, from 1829 to 1831 he was on the Committee on Revolutionary Claims , which was responsible for claims from the War of Independence . From 1831 to 1835 he then sat on the disability pension committee.

After he was not confirmed in the elections of 1834 and his seat went to William Sprague , Burges resigned on March 3, 1835 from Congress. In 1836 he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Rhode Island. Afterwards Burges worked again as a lawyer. He died on his estate near Providence in 1853.

Web links

• Tristam Burges in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)

• Tristam Burges in the database of Find a Grave (English)