Francis Granger

Infobox US Cabinet official
name=Francis Granger

---

order=10th
title=United States Postmaster General
term_start=March 6, 1841
term_end=September 18, 1841
predecessor=John Milton Niles
successor=Charles Anderson Wickliffe
birth_date=birth date|1792|12|1|mf=y
birth_place=Suffield, Connecticut, U.S.
death_date=death date and age|1868|8|31|1792|12|1
death_place=Canandaigua, New York, U.S.
party=National Republican, Whig, Anti-Masonic
spouse=Cornelia Rutson VanRensselaer Granger
profession=Politician, Lawyer

Francis Granger (December 1, 1792 – August 31, 1868) was a Representative from New York. He was the son of Gideon Granger, another Postmaster General, and the first cousin of Amos P. Granger.

Biography

Granger was born in Suffield, Connecticut and pursued classical studies at and graduated from Yale College in 1811. He then moved with his father to Canandaigua, New York in 1814, where he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1816 and commenced practice. He married Cornelia Rutson VanRensselaer. They had one son, Gideon Granger II, born in 1821, and an unnamed daughter whom died with her mother in child birth in 1823.

Granger was a member of the State assembly from 1826 to 1828 and from 1830 to 1832. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1828, and in both 1830 and 1832 was an unsuccessful National Republican candidate for Governor of New York. In 1836, he was unsuccessful as a Whig and Anti-Masonic candidate for Vice President, which he narrowly lost when it was voted by the U.S. Senate that Richard M. Johnson was the rightful winner, and also unsuccessful as a Whig candidate for election to the Twenty-Fifth Congress.

He was, however, elected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the Twenty-Fourth Congress (March 4, 1835 to March 3, 1837), and was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-Sixth and Twenty-Seventh Congresses (he served from March 4, 1839, to March 5, 1841). Granger was appointed Postmaster General in the Cabinet of President William Henry Harrison and served from March 6 to September 18, 1841, after which he was again elected to the Twenty-Seventh Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Greig and served from November 27, 1841, to March 3, 1843. Granger was not a candidate for reelection in 1842.

A supporter of the Compromise of 1850, Granger led the pro-Fillmore group which became known as the Silver Gray Whigs after Granger's own silver hair. This faction would remain in conflict with the anti-Compromise Sewardites until the collapse of the Whig Party in the state in 1855.

Chairman of the Whig National Executive Committee from 1856 to 1860, Granger joined in the call for the convention of the Constitutional Union Party that was held in May of 1860. He was then a member of the peace convention of 1861 held in Washington, D.C. in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending war. He died in Canandaigua and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.

External links

* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6893986 Francis Granger] at Find A Grave