Prentiss Mellen

Prentiss Mellen ( born October 11, 1764 in Sterling, Worcester County, Massachusetts, † December 31, 1840 in Portland, Maine ) was an American politician ( Federalist Party), who represented the state of Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.

Prentiss Mellen, son of a clergyman, made in 1784 graduated from Harvard University and studied as a consequence the law, after which he was admitted to the bar in 1788. After that he began in his hometown of Sterling, in Bridgewater and in Dover (New Hampshire) to practice as a lawyer. In 1791 he settled in Biddeford Maine as a lawyer in today's down, before he lived from 1806 in Portland, which at that time also belonged to Massachusetts.

From 1808 to 1809 Mellen served on the Governor's Council, an eight-member committee, which is the Governor of Massachusetts to advise you. In the presidential elections in 1816, he sat as an elector of the victorious Federalists in Massachusetts Rufus King in the Electoral College; the majority of votes united but James Monroe of the Democratic Republicans up.

In 1817 Mellen was curator of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, which he remained until 1836. During this time he moved as a representative of Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate. He entered on June 5, 1818, the successor to the retired Eli P. Ashmun and remained until May 15, 1820 in Congress. On this day, he laid himself down from his position to become the Chief Justice of the newly admitted to the Union State of Maine Supreme Court. This post had Mellen held until his resignation in 1834. Then he stood still in 1838 a commission for the revision of the Code of Maine ago, before he retired to private life and died in 1840 in Portland.