Thomas Spalding

Thomas Spalding (March 26, 1774 - January 5, 1851) was a United States Representative from Georgia. He was born in Frederica, St. Simons Island, Glynn County, Georgia. He attended the common schools of Georgia and Florida and a private school in Massachusetts. He studied law and was admitted to the bar about 1790, but did not practice. He engaged extensively in agricultural pursuits.

Spalding served as member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1794. He was member of the state constitutional convention in 1798. He moved to McIntosh County, Georgia, in 1803 and then served in the Georgia Senate. He successfully contested as a Republican the election of Cowles Mead to the Ninth Congress and served from December 24, 1805, until his resignation in 1806. He served as a trustee of the McIntosh County Academy in 1807 and was one of the founders of the Bank of Darien and of the branch in Milledgeville, Georgia, and president for many years.

Spalding engaged in the planting of Sea Island Cotton, residing on Sapelo Island, Georgia. He was a commissioner on the part of the State of Georgia to determine the boundary line between Georgia and the Territory of Florida in 1826. He was a commissioner from the United States of America to Bermuda to negotiate relative to property taken or destroyed in the South by the British in the War of 1812. He was a president of the convention at Milledgeville, Georgia in 1850 which resolved that the State of Georgia would resist any act of Congress abolishing slavery and died, while en route home, at the residence of his son, near Darien, Georgia, in 1851. He was buried in St. Andrew’s Cemetery.

References

*CongBio|M000614

Bibliography

Coulter, E. Merton. "Thomas Spalding of Sapelo". University, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1940.