Henry Martyn Spofford born in Gilmanton

Gilmanton, New Hampshire

Gilmanton is a town in Belknap County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 3,777 at the 2010 census. Gilmanton includes the villages of Gilmanton Corner and Gilmanton Ironworks...

, New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, was a judge of the Louisiana Supreme Court

Louisiana Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of Louisiana is the highest court and court of last resort in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The modern Supreme Court, composed of seven justices, meets in the French Quarter of New Orleans....

. He graduated from Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...

 and relocated to Louisiana, in 1845, where he practiced law. Spofford was elected to the Louisiana Supreme Court and served until 1858, when he resigned to return to his law practice. Spofford was elected in 1877 to the United States Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 by one of two contesting Louisiana legislatures after the disputed election of 1876

United States presidential election, 1876

The United States presidential election of 1876 was one of the most disputed and controversial presidential elections in American history. Samuel J. Tilden of New York outpolled Ohio's Rutherford B. Hayes in the popular vote, and had 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, with 20 votes uncounted...

, but he was never seated.

After the contested election of 1876, Democrat-backed legislature, allied with Democratic Governor Francis T. Nicholls

Francis T. Nicholls

Francis Redding Tillou Nicholls was an American attorney, politician, judge, and a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...

 selected Spofford as United States Senator. However the Republican-dominated legislature allied with Republican Governor Stephen B. Packard

Stephen B. Packard

Stephen Bennett Packard , a native of Maine, emerged as an important Republican politician in Louisiana during the era of Reconstruction...

 had separately selected William Pitt Kellogg. The United States Senate, which was at the time dominated by the so-called Radical faction of the Republican party, refused to seat Spofford.

He died in Red Sulphur Springs

Red Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

Red Sulphur Springs is a small unincorporated community in Monroe County, West Virginia, USA. It once boasted the Red Sulphur Springs Hotel. It is located on West Virginia Route 12, close to Indian Creek.-History:...

, West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

.