Jesse B. Thomas

Jesse Burgess Thomas (* 1777 in Shepherdstown, Jefferson County, Virginia (now West Virginia); † May 2, 1853 in Mount Vernon, Ohio) was an American politician of the Democratic- Republican Party. He served as one of the first two U.S. senators for the state of Illinois.

Jesse Thomas studied in Mason County in Kentucky jurisprudence and worked there until 1803 as a county clerk in the administration. He then moved north to Lawrenceburg in Indiana Territory, where he worked as a lawyer and in 1805 was assistant attorney general of the territory. In the same year he moved as a deputy to the Territorial Parliament and served until 1808 as its Speaker.

Following the resignation of Benjamin Parke, who represented the territory as a non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives of the United States, Thomas was his successor in Washington DC selected. He took his seat on October 22, 1808 to March 3, 1809 to true. Thereafter he lived in Kaskaskia in the Illinois territory that broke away this year from Indiana Territory, and later in Cahokia and Edwardsville.

In this territory Thomas served from 1809 to 1818 as a district judge for the north-western district. Then he stood before the Constitutional Convention for the future state of Illinois and was elected in 1818 after joining the Union on the side of Ninian Edwards as one of the first two U.S. Senators from Illinois. He was instrumental in the constitution of the Missouri Compromise. After beginning his second term in 1823 he was among the Republicans Crawford, the faction of the splintered Democratic Republicans led by William Harris Crawford; later he became a follower of John Quincy Adams.

Jesse Thomas renounced the candidacy for a third term and retired on March 3, from 1829, from the Senate, where he was also Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands. He ended his political career and moved to Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he committed suicide on May 2, 1853.