”Hon. Hiester Clymer, Chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the War Department,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1876, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives

CLYMER, Hiester, (nephew of William Hiester and cousin of Isaac Ellmaker Hiester), a Representative from Pennsylvania; born near Morgantown, Caernarvon Township, Berks County, Pa., November 3, 1827; attended primary schools at Reading and was graduated from Princeton College in 1847; studied law; was admitted to the bar of Berks County April 6, 1849, and practiced in Reading and Berks County until 1851, when he moved to Pottsville, Schuylkill County; returned to Reading in 1856; represented Berks County on the board of revenue commissioners of the State in January 1860; delegate to the Democratic National Conventions at Charleston and at Baltimore in 1860; member of the State senate from October 1860 until March 1866, when he resigned; unsuccessful Democratic candidate for election as Governor in 1866; delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1868; member of the State board of charities in 1870; elected as a Democrat to the Forty-third and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1873-March 3, 1881); chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Department of War (Forty-fourth Congress), Committee on Appropriations (Forty-fourth Congress), Committee on Expenditures in the Department of State (Forty-sixth Congress); was not a candidate for renomination in 1880; after his retirement from Congress was vice president of the Union Trust Co. of Philadelphia and president of the Clymer Iron Co.; died in Reading, Pa., on June 12, 1884; interment in the Charles Evans Cemetery.