Samuel Finley Vinton (September 25, 1792 – May 11, 1862) was a member of the
United States House of Representatives from
Ohio from March 4, 1823 to March 3, 1837 and again from March 4, 1843 to March 3, 1851.
Biography
Born in
South Hadley, Massachusetts
South Hadley (, ) is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 18,150 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area.
South Hadley is home to Mount Holyoke Colleg ...
, Vinton was the son of Abiatha and Sarah (Day) Vinton. He graduated from
Williams College in 1814, paying his way through school by teaching. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in
Connecticut in 1816. He then moved to southern
Ohio and practiced law in
Gallipolis
Gallipolis ( ) is a chartered village (United States)#Ohio, village in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Gallia County, Ohio, Gallia County. The municipality is located in Southeast Ohio along the Ohio River about 55 miles southeast of ...
. On August 18, 1824, he married Romaine Madeleine Bureau, daughter of
John Peter Roman Bureau and Madeleine Françoise Charlotte Marret, in Gallia County, Ohio. She died in 1831, after the couple had had a son and a daughter,
Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren.
After holding various local offices, he was elected to the
Eighteenth Congress on a non-partisan ballot. Vinton was re-elected to the
Nineteenth,
Twentieth
20 (twenty; Roman numeral XX) is the natural number following 19 and preceding 21. A group of twenty units may also be referred to as a score.
In mathematics
*20 is a pronic number.
*20 is a tetrahedral number as 1, 4, 10, 20.
*20 is the ...
,
Twenty-first,
Twenty-second,
Twenty Third and
Twenty-fourth Congresses. In the Twenty-third Congress he was an Anti-Jacksonian
Democrat and in the Twenty-fourth and succeeding Congresses he was a
Whig.
He did not seek re-election in 1836, returning to Ohio to his successful practice of law. Whig
Presidential elector in 1840 for
Harrison/
Tyler Tyler may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tyler (name), an English name; with lists of people with the surname or given name
* Tyler, the Creator (born 1991), American rap artist and producer
* John Tyler, 10th president of the United ...
. However, he returned to Congress in 1843, again as a
Whig. In his second service in Congress, he was a member of the
Twenty-eighth,
Twenty-ninth,
Thirtieth, and
Thirty-first Congresses. He was noted for his service on the
Public Lands Committee
In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlic ...
, helping to create the
United States Department of the Interior, and, as
Thomas Ewing put it, had "more influence in the House of Representatives, much more, than any other man in it." He was an authority on
parliamentary procedure and in the Thirtieth Congress, he declined the Speakership but took the chairmanship of the
Ways and Means Committee instead.
President
Millard Fillmore offered him the post of
Secretary of the Interior, but he declined. He did not run for re-election in 1850, instead running for
Governor of Ohio
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
as a Whig in 1851. In 1853, he became president of the
Cleveland and Toledo Railroad
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, retiring the next year to
Washington, D.C.
In 1862, President
Abraham Lincoln appointed him to appraise the value of slaves freed in the
District of Columbia. He died in
Washington that year and was buried in
Gallipolis, Ohio.
He was a trustee of
Ohio University from 1848 to 1862.
Personal life
His daughter,
Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren was a writer. His son-in-law was Admiral
John A. Dahlgren
John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren (November 13, 1809 – July 12, 1870) was a United States Navy officer who founded his service's Ordnance Department and launched significant advances in gunnery.
Dahlgren devised a smoothbore howitzer, adaptable ...
.
Legacy
Vinton County, Ohio and
Vinton, Ohio are named for him.
References
Further reading
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*
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vinton, Samuel Finley
1792 births
1862 deaths
People from South Hadley, Massachusetts
Ohio Democratic-Republicans
Democratic-Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives
Ohio National Republicans
National Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives
Whig Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio
19th-century American politicians
1840 United States presidential electors
Ohio lawyers
Ohio University trustees
Williams College alumni
19th-century American lawyers