Elias Warner LEAVENWORTH, Congress, NY (1803-1887)

LEAVENWORTH, Elias Warner, a Representative from New York; born in Canaan, N.Y., December 20, 1803; moved with his parents to Great Barrington, Mass., in 1806; attended the Hudson Academy and was graduated from Yale College in 1824; studied law in Great Barrington and in the Litchfield (Conn.) Law School 1825-1827; was admitted to the bar in 1827 and practiced in Syracuse, N.Y., until 1850, when he abandoned the practice of law because of ill health; passed through the various grades and was appointed brigadier general of militia in 1836; president of Syracuse village 1839-1841, 1846, and 1847; mayor of the town in 1849, 1850, 1859, and 1860; member of the State assembly in 1850 and 1857; secretary of state of New York in 1854 and 1855; president of the Republican State convention in 1860; commissioner for the United States under the convention with New Granada in Washington, D.C., in 1861 and 1862; appointed president of the board of commissioners to locate the State asylum for the blind and a trustee of the State asylum for the insane in 1865; member of the New York and New Jersey Boundary Line Commission in 1875; elected as a Republican to the Forty-fourth Congress (March 4, 1875-March 3, 1877); declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1876; resumed business activities in Syracuse, N.Y., and died there November 25, 1887; interment in Oakwood Cemetery.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present