Hale, Artemas

Born: 1783-10-20 Winchendon, Massachusetts

Died: 1882-08-03 Bridgewater, Massachusetts

Artemas Hale was a schoolteacher, manufacturer, state legislator, and U.S. representative. Hale received a limited education in his native Winchendon, Massachusetts, spending his early years working on the family farm. From 1804 to 1814, he taught school in Hingham, Massachusetts. He married Deborah Lincoln in 1815, with whom he had three children. The couple settled in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where Artemas became involved in the manufacture of cotton gins and local politics. A Whig, he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1824, 1825, 1827, and 1828 and the Massachusetts Senate in 1833 and 1834. Hale returned to the House in 1838 and remained there until 1842. In 1844, he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, serving in that body from March 1845 to March 1849. At the end of term, he returned to Bridgewater, where he engaged in agriculture. Hale was a delegate to the Massachusetts state constitutional convention in 1853. In 1850, he was farming and owned real property valued at $13,000. In 1860, Hale was operating a large farm operation and owned real property valued at $12,500 and had a personal estate of $35,000. He was a presidential elector for Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 1139; Nahum Mitchell, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Massachusetts (Boston: Kidder & Wright, 1840), 169; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Bridgewater, Plymouth County, IL, 15; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Bridgewater, Plymouth County, IL, 281, Gravestone, Mount Prospect Cemetery, Bridgewater, MA.