Collamer, Jacob

Born: 1791-01-08 Troy, New York

Died: 1865-11-09 Woodstock, Vermont

Collamer served as a junior officer during the War of 1812 and earned admittance to the bar in 1813. He practiced law in three Vermont counties and served in the Vermont House of Representatives, before earning a position in the Vermont Supreme Court in 1833. He remained in that position until 1842, when he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Whig. He left in 1849 to serve as postmaster general under Zachary Taylor but resigned with the rest of the cabinet after Taylor's death and returned to his seat on the Vermont Supreme Court. In 1855, he ascended to the U.S. Senate as a Republican and remained there until his death.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 845; Clarence Russell Williams, "Collamer, Jacob," Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 3:397-403.