Uriah Tracy

Uriah Tracy (February 2, 1755 – July 19, 1807) was an American politician from Connecticut who served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Tracy was born in Franklin, Connecticut. In his youth he received a liberal education.cite web |url=http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/Research/Rosters/Veterans/War_Revolution.pdf |title=Eyewitnesses Interred or Memorialized in the Congressional Cemetery |accessdate=2008-07-25 |publisher=Congressional Cemetery] His name is listed as amongst those in a company from Roxbury responding to the Lexington Alarm at the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. He later served in the Roxbury Company as a clerk

Uriah subsequently graduated from Yale University (where his contemporaries included Noah Webster) in 1778. He was admitted to the bar in 1781 and subsequently practiced law in Litchfield for many years. He served in the state legislature in 1788–1793, and in the United States Congress from 1793–1796, having been chosen as a Federalist.

After his term, he was elected to the United States Senate in place of Jonathan Trumbull, who had resigned. Tracy served until the time of his death in Washington, D. C.. He has the distinction of being the first person interred in the Congressional Cemetery.

In 1803, he and several other New England politicians proposed secession of New England from the union due to growing influence ofJeffersonian democrats and the Louisiana Purchase which they felt would further diminish Northern influence.

His portrait, painted by Ralph Earl, is in the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society in Litchfield, Connecticut.

External links

* [http://www.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org Portrait at the Litchfield Historical Society]

Notes