John Ritchie (Maryland)

John Ritchie ( born August 12, 1831 in Frederick, Maryland, † October 27, 1887 ) was an American lawyer and politician. Between 1871 and 1873 he represented the state of Maryland in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

John Ritchie visited the Frederick Academy and then began to study medicine, but he broke off. After studying law at Harvard University and his 1854 was admitted to the bar he began to work in Frederick in this profession. Ritchie was also captain of the state militia. In this capacity, he was ordered by U.S. President James Buchanan by Harpers Ferry in 1859, where John Brown had made his historic raid on a weapons cache. During the Civil War he was a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in the army of the Union. Between 1867 and 1871 acted as Ritchie prosecutor in Frederick County. At the same time he proposed as a member of the Democratic Party launched a political career.

In the congressional elections of 1870, Ritchie was in the fourth electoral district of Maryland in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of Patrick Hamill on March 4, 1871. Since he has not been confirmed in 1872, he was able to complete only one term in Congress until March 3, 1873. After the end of his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, he practiced as a lawyer again. In 1881 he became a judge in the Sixth Judicial District of Maryland and at the same time Associate Judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals. He died on 27 October 1887 in his hometown of Frederick, where he was also buried.