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Senate Years of Service: 1825-1828 Party: Adams
HARRISON, William Henry, (son of Benjamin Harrison [1726-1791], father of John Scott
Harrison, brother of Carter Bassett Harrison, grandfather of Benjamin Harrison,
and great-great-grandfather of William Henry Harrison [1896-1990]),
a Delegate from the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio, a
Representative and a Senator from Ohio, and 9th President of the United States;
born on Berkeley Plantation, Charles City County, Va., February 9, 1773;
pursued classical studies; attended Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia; studied
medicine; entered the Army in 1798 as an ensign in the First Infantry, served
in the Indian wars, and rose to the rank of lieutenant; resigned from the Army
in 1798; appointed secretary of the Northwest Territory 1798-1799; elected as a
Delegate from the Northwest Territory to the Sixth Congress and served from
March 4, 1799, to May 14, 1800, when he resigned to become Territorial Governor
of Indiana 1801-1813 and also Indian commissioner; defeated the Indians at
Tippecanoe in November 1811; major general in the United States Army in the War
of 1812; resigned from the Army in 1814; head commissioner to treat with the
Indians; elected to the Fourteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the
resignation of John McLean; reelected to the Fifteenth Congress and served from
October 8, 1816, to March 3, 1819; unsuccessful candidate for governor, Ohio in
1820; member, State senate 1819-1821; presidential elector in Ohio in 1822;
unsuccessful candidate for House of Representatives in 1822; elected to the
United States Senate and served from March 4, 1825, to May 20, 1828, when he
resigned to become Minister to Colombia 1828-1829; chairman, Committee on
Military Affairs (Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses); unsuccessful Whig
candidate for president in 1836; elected President of the United States in 1840
and served from March 4, 1841, until his death in Washington, D.C., April 4,
1841; interment in William Henry Harrison Memorial State Park, opposite
Congress Green Cemetery, North Bend, Ohio.
BibliographyAmerican National Biography;
Dictionary of American Biography; Cleaves, Freeman.
Old Tippecanoe: William Henry Harrison. New York: Scribners
Sons, 1939; Goebel, Dorothy.
William Henry Harrison: A Political Biography. Philadelphia:
Porcupine Press, 1974.
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