Samuel Rossiter Betts

Samuel Rossiter Betts ( born June 8, 1787 Richmond, Massachusetts, † November 2, 1868 in New Haven, Connecticut) was an American lawyer and politician. Between 1815 and 1817 he represented the State of New York in the U.S. House of Representatives; later he became a federal judge.

Career

Samuel Rossiter Betts was born about four years after the end of the Revolutionary War in Richmond. He graduated in 1806 from Williams College in Williamstown. Betts studied law in Hudson. His admission to the bar he received in 1807 and then began practicing in Monticello. During the British -American War he served as Judge Advocate of the Volunteers.

As opponents of a strong central government, he joined at that time, which was founded by Thomas Jefferson Democratic- Republican Party. In the congressional elections of 1814 for the 14th Congress, he was in the seventh election district of New York in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington DC chosen, where he became the successor of Abraham J. Hasbrouck on March 4, 1815. Since he gave up for reelection in 1816, he retired after the March 3, 1817 out of the Congress.

He moved to Newburgh, where he worked as a lawyer again. In 1823 he was appointed under the new constitution of New York to the District Judge. After that he was appointed on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1826 and later elected to the judge - a position which he held until his retirement in 1867. He died on 2 November 1868 in New Haven, and was then buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.