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Senate Years of Service: 1845-1851; 1855-1861 Party: Democrat; Democrat
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YULEE, David Levy, a Delegate and a Senator from Florida; born David Levy in St. Thomas, West
Indies, June 12, 1810; at the age of nine was sent to the United States to Norfolk, Va. to attend a
private school; studied law in St. Augustine, Fla.; admitted to the bar in 1836 and practiced in St.
Augustine, Fla.; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1838; clerk to the Territorial
legislature in 1841; elected as a Whig-Democrat, a Territorial delegate to the Twenty-seventh and
Twenty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1841-March 3, 1845); did not seek renomination, having
become a candidate for the Senate; upon the admission of Florida as a State into the Union was
elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate and served from July 1, 1845, to March 3, 1851;
unsuccessful candidate for reelection; chairman, Committee on Private Land Claims (Twenty-ninth
and Thirtieth Congresses), Committee on Naval Affairs (Thirty-first Congress); by an act of the
Florida Legislature and at his request his name was changed to David Levy Yulee in 1846; again
elected to the United States Senate in January 1855 and served from March 4, 1855, until his
withdrawal January 21, 1861; chairman, Committee on Post Office and Post Roads (Thirty-fifth and
Thirty-sixth Congresses); due to his support of the Confederacy, was a prisoner at Fort Pulaski in
1865; president of the Florida Railroad Company 1853-1866; president of Peninsular Railroad
Company, Tropical Florida Railway Company, and Fernandina and Jacksonville Railroad Company;
known as the Father of Floridas railroads; moved to Washington, D.C., in 1880; died in New
York City, October 10, 1886; interment in Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Hühner, Leon. David L. Yulee, Floridas First
Senator. In Jews in the South, edited by Leonard Dinnerstein and Mary Dale
Palsson, pp. 52-74. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973; Whitfield, James B. Some
Legal Phases of the Senatorial Contest Between David L. Yulee and Stephen R. Mallory, Sr., in
1851. Florida Law Journal 19 (October 1945): 251-55.
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