James Israel Standifer

James Israel Standifer was an American politician that represented Tennessee in the United States House of Representatives. He was born in Virginia, probably in 1782. He attended the common schools and graduated from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He was elected to the Eighteenth Congress, which lasted from March 4, 1823 to March 3, 1825. He was also elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-first Congress through the Twenty-third Congress, as a White supporter to the Twenty-fourth Congress, and as a Whig to the Twenty-fifth Congress. He served from March 4, 1829 until his death near Kingston, Tennessee on his way to Washington, D.C. He was interred in the Baptist Cemetery of Kingston, Tennessee**. When White ran for president in 1836, it split the Democratic Party in Tennessee so badly that the Whigs carried the state in presidential elections for the next twenty years. President Jackson demanded the Tennessee congressional delegation back his vice president, Martin Van Buren of New York, as his successor. From a review of the historical record, it is clear that Congressman James Standifer, who represented the Sequatchie Valley just west of modern Chattanooga, was the chief instigator of the presidential campaign of Hugh Lawson White (see "James Standifer, Sequatchie Valley Congressman," by Steve Byas, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Summer 1991).
**According to the assistant archivist for Roane County, TN.:They have death records as far back as 1804 and they have never come across this man or any record of his death. She said that back then, the government would send out a coroner to investigate an official’s death to make sure he had not been murdered. Since he was a Congressman, there would have been some record of him being in (or even passing thru) Kingston ~ especially if he died somewhere in Roane county. The Historical Society has recorded almost all the cemeteries in the county and has never come across anything for this man. She said "it's a story that just won't die". She also stated that there is no record of a "Baptist Cemetery" in Kingston, TN.

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