Samuel Anderson Purviance

Samuel Anderson Purviance ( born January 10, 1809 in Butler, Pennsylvania, † February 14, 1882 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania ) was an American politician. Between 1855 and 1859 he represented the State of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Career

Samuel Purviance attended elementary school and then college. After a subsequent law degree in 1827 and its recent approval as a lawyer, he started in Butler to work in this profession. In the meantime, he moved to Warren County, where he served for two years as district attorney. He then returned to Butler, where he continued his profession. At the same time he proposed as a member of the Whigs a political career. In the years 1837 and 1838, he participated as a delegate to a constitutional convention of his state; 1838 to 1839 he sat as an MP in the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. In May 1844, he was a delegate to the national convention of the Whigs. After its dissolution he was a member of the short-lived opposition party for a short time. Thereafter he joined the Republicans. In the years 1856, 1860, 1864 and 1868 he attended as a delegate the respective Republican National Conventions, to which John C. Frémont, twice Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant were finally nominated as a presidential candidate.

In the congressional elections of 1854 was Purviance for the opposition party in the 22nd electoral district of Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of Thomas Marshall Howe on March 4, 1855. After a re-election as a Republican, he was able to complete in Congress until March 3, 1859 two legislative sessions. These were shaped by the events leading up to the Civil War. In 1858, he was not nominated by his party for re-election.

1859 Samuel Purviance moved to Pittsburgh, where he practiced until 1876 as a lawyer. In 1861, he served as interim Attorney General of Pennsylvania. From 1864 to 1868 he was Chairman of the Republican Party of his state. In 1872 he was again a delegate to a constitutional convention of Pennsylvania; In 1874, he sought unsuccessfully to return to Congress. Since 1876 he lived in retirement. He died on 14 February 1882 in Allegheny, a suburb of Pittsburgh.