Lewis Dewart
Encyclopedia
Lewis Dewart was a Jacksonian
Democratic-Republican Party (United States)
The Democratic-Republican Party or Republican Party was an American political party founded in the early 1790s by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Political scientists use the former name, while historians prefer the latter one; contemporaries generally called the party the "Republicans", along...

 member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

.

Lewis Dewart (father of William Lewis Dewart
William Lewis Dewart
William Lewis Dewart was a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.William L. Dewart was born in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. He attended the common schools of Sunbury and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania...

) was born in Sunbury, Pennsylvania
Sunbury, Pennsylvania
Sunbury is a city in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city is located on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, just downstream of the confluence of its main and West branches. The population was 9,905 at the 2010 census...

. He was a clerk in his father’s store for several years and later became a coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...

 operator and banker. He served as postmaster at Sunbury from 1806 to 1816. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives is the lower house of the bicameral Pennsylvania General Assembly, the legislature of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. There are 203 members, elected for two year terms from single member districts....

 from 1812 to 1820. He was elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate
Pennsylvania State Senate
The Pennsylvania State Senate has been meeting since 1791. It is the upper house of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, the Pennsylvania state legislature. The State Senate meets in the State Capitol building in Harrisburg. Senators are elected for four year terms, staggered every two years such...

 in 1823 and served three years. He was one of the organizers and builders of the Danville & Pottsville Railroad, and served as one of the first directors.

Dewart was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-second
22nd United States Congress
-House of Representatives:-Leadership:- Senate :* President:** John C. Calhoun , resigned December 28, 1832, thereafter vacant.* President pro tempore:** Samuel Smith , first elected December 5, 1831** Littleton W...

 Congress. He was again a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1835 to 1840 and served as speaker in 1840. He was chief burgess of Sunbury in 1837 and a member of the school board. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Pennsylvania in 1840. He died in Sunbury in 1852. Interment in Sunbury Cemetery.

Sources

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