Cambreleng, Churchill C.

Born: 1786-10-24 Washington, North Carolina

Died: 1862-04-30 Suffolk County, New York

Cambreleng attended school in New Bern, North Carolina before moving to New York City in 1802, where he found employment as a clerk in the mercantile business. From 1860 to 1809, he worked as a clerk in Providence, Rhode Island. Returning to New York City, he entered into business with John Jack Astor, amassing a fortune promoting Astor's interests across the United States and around the globe. In 1820, voters in New York's Second District elected Cambreleng as a Democratic-Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1822, he won reelection as a Crawford Republican, representing the New York Third District. Third District voters reelected him to the following six Congresses as a Jacksonian. In 1836, he won reelection as a Democrat. An unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1838, Cambreleng left the House in March 1839. In 1840, President Martin Van Buren appointed him U.S. Minister to Russia, and he served in that post until 1841. Cambreleng served as a member of the New York constitutional convention in 1846. In the late 1840s, he joined the Barnburner faction of the Democratic Party, and supported Van Buren and the Free Soil Party in the presidential election of 1848. Cambreleng married (date unknown) a woman with the surname Glover; the couple had no children.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1996 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1997), 770; Gravestone, Section 73, Lot 4150, Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY; Rodney P. Carlise, "Cambreleng, Churchill Caldom," American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4:253-54.