Ambrose Spencer

Encyclopedia : A : AM : AMB : Ambrose Spencer

Ambrose Spencer (December 13]], 1765 - March 13, 1848) was a United States Representative and New York State Attorney General. Born in Salisbury, Connecticut, he attended Yale College and graduated from Harvard University in 1783. He studied law, was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Hudson, where he was city clerk from 1786 to 1793. He was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1793 to 1795 and served in the New York State Senate from 1795 to 1804. He was assistant attorney general in 1796, and attorney general of New York from 1802 to 1804.

From 1804 to 1819, he was a justice of the State supreme court; from 1819 to 1823, he was chief justice. He resumed the practice of law in Albany, and was elected to the Twenty-first Congress, serving from March 4, 1829 to March 3, 1831; during that Congress, he was a member of the Committee on Agriculture.

Spencer was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection, and was one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1830 to conduct the impeachment proceedings against James H. Peck, United States judge for the district of Missouri. He was mayor of Albany from 1824 to 1826, and moved to Lyons in 1839 and engaged in agricultural pursuits. He was president of the Whig National Convention at Baltimore in 1844; in 1848 he died in Lyons; interment was in Albany Rural Cemetery, Menands, New York.

John Canfield Spencer, Ambrose's son, was also a U.S. Representative from New York.

References

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.