Samuel F. Hersey

Samuel Freeman Hersey (April 12, 1812–February 3, 1875) was a politician and "lumber baron" from the U.S. state of Maine. He served in the Maine State Senate and as a United States Congressman from the district which included his home-town of Bangor.

Hersey was born in Sumner, Maine and attended common schools in both Sumner and Buckfield. He also taught school 1828-1831. He graduated from Hebron Academy in 1831.

Hersey engaged in the mercantile business in Lincoln and in Milford; and then in the lumber business in Stillwater and finally Bangor, where he settled and prospered. In addition to owning timber land he was president of the Market Bank. He was elected as a member of the Maine House of Representatives, and was a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention. Hersey was a close friend and patron of Bangor politician and Abraham Lincoln's Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, which is probably why he served on the Republican National Committee 1864-1868. He was elected to the Maine State Senate in 1868-1869.

Hersey was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Maine in 1870, but was elected to the Forty-third and Forty-fourth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1873, until his death in Bangor before the close of the Forty-third Congress. He is interred in Mount Hope Cemetery.

Hersey is often styled "General Hersey" in contemporary documents, which is a state militia title dating to the time of the Aroostook War. He was Major General commanding the 9th Division of the Maine State Militia.

Hersey left his fortune to the city of Bangor, Maine which used it to found the Bangor Public Library and built a new City Hall (which was demolished in the late 1960s during "Urban Renewal"). A large portrait of Hersey still hangs in the Bangor Public Library.

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*CongBio|H000545