A. Lawrence Foster
A. Lawrence Foster ( born September 17, 1802 in Littleton, Massachusetts, † May 21 1877 in Washington DC) was an American lawyer and politician. Between 1841 and 1843 he represented the State of New York in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Career
Abel Lawrence Foster attended public schools. He studied law in Vernon. After receiving his license to practice law, he began about 1827 to practice in Morrisville.
Politically he belonged to the Whig party. In the congressional elections of 1840 for the 27th Congress he was on the 23rd electoral district of New York in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he succeeded Nehemiah H. Earll and Edward Rogers took on March 4, 1841 which together previously represented the 23th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He retired after the March 3, 1843 out of the Congress. During his time Congress he had presided over the Committee on Expenditures in the U.S. Treasury.
He moved to Virginia in 1844 and settled on a farm in Fairfax. Part of the land now belongs to Tysons Corner. In the 1850s he served as Fairfax County Commissioner. During the Civil War his mind for the Union was a reason for temporary to Washington DC to move. In 1862 he was appointed U.S. Indian agent for the Chippewa tribes in Mississippi. After the war he returned to Fairfax. He was appointed to one of the three U.S. tax commissioners for the northern part of Virginia, was admitted to the Union after the Virginia again. He also was responsible for the Tax Sale of the property ( Custis -Lee Mansion) by Robert Edward Lee responsible to the federal government, which today is part of the Arlington National Cemetery. In the 1870s his health deteriorated. He moved then his residence to Washington DC, where he died on 21 May 1877.
His heirs established in the 1890s, a petition to the U.S. Congress them almost $ 29,000 ( about $ 712,000 in 2009) to refund as compensation for his property and supplies, which used by the U.S. Army or were destroyed by the Confederates. In the early 1900s, the United States Court of Claims approved a partial payment to settle the case.