John Henry (Maryland politician)

John Henry was born in November 1750. He was the son of Dorothy Rider and Col. John Henry and the grandson of Rev. John Henry, a Presbyterian minister who came to America in the early 1700s. His grandmother, Mary King, has been claimed without proof to be the daughter of an Irish baronet. His mother was a descendant of one of the early settlers of Dorchester County.

Henry attended West Nottingham Academy in Cecil County, Maryland and graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) in 1769; he then studied law at the Middle Temple (one of the Inns of Court where English barristers are trained) in London.{{cite book|last1=Buchholz|first1=Heinrich Ewald|title=Governors of Maryland: from the revolution to the year 1908|date=1908|publisher=Williams & Wilkins Company|url=https://archive.org/details/governorsmaryla00buchgoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/governorsmaryla00buchgoog/page/n373 237]|access-date=29 August 2017|language=en}} He returned to the United States in 1775 and practiced law in Dorchester County.

He was a member of the Episcopal Church and the United States Democratic-Republican Party. Originally, he was a member of the Federalist Party.

Henry served as a member of Maryland House of Delegates from 1777 to 1780 and a member of the Maryland State Senate from 1780 to 1790. During that time he was chosen as a delegate to the Continental Congress from Maryland from 1778 to 1780 and from 1785 to 1786; during his service, he was a member of the committee that prepared the ordinance for the government of the Northwest Territory.{{cite book|last1=Capace|first1=Nancy|title=Encyclopedia of Maryland|date=1999|publisher=Somerset Publishers, Inc.|isbn=9780403098224|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1F2ENniIFXgC&pg=PA94|access-date=29 August 2017|language=en}} He was elected as an inaugural Senator from Maryland, serving 1789 as a Federalist till his resignation on December 10, 1797, to assume the Governorship.

In the 1796 election, Henry received two electoral votes for President of the United States.{{cite book|title=The National Cyclopedia of American Biography Vol. 1|date=1899|publisher=J. T. White|pages=294–295|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vtk-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA294|access-date=29 August 2017|language=en}} He served as Governor of Maryland from 1797 to 1798. In this capacity, he exchanged letters with then Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson.{{cite book|last1=McDonald|first1=Robert M. S.|title=Confounding Father: Thomas Jefferson's Image in His Own Time|date=2016|publisher=University of Virginia Press|isbn=9780813938974|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pLk4CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT102|access-date=29 August 2017|language=en}}

On March 6, 1787, Henry was married to Margaret Campbell (1769–1789), the daughter of John and Elizabeth (née Goldsborough) Campbell of Caroline County. Her sister married Philip Francis and was the grandmother of Gov. Philip Francis Thomas. Margaret died, aged 20, shortly after the birth of their second son. Their two sons were:{{cite book|last1=Henry|first1=John|title=Letters and Papers of Governor John Henry of Maryland: Member of Continental Congress 1777–1788, Member of United States Senate 1789–1797, Governor of Maryland, 1797–1798. With Some Account of His Life, Genealogy and Descendants, as Shown by Extracts from Records and Papers in the Maryland Historical Society, and Original Letters and Memoranda in the Hands of the Compiler, One of His Great-grandsons, J. Winfield Henry|date=1904|publisher=G. W. King Printing Company|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xr0FgJOiVgEC&pg=PA94|access-date=29 August 2017|language=en}}{{cite book|last1=Jones|first1=Elias|title=History of Dorchester County, Maryland|date=1902|publisher=Williams & Wilkins|url=https://archive.org/details/historydorchest00jonegoog|page=[https://archive.org/details/historydorchest00jonegoog/page/n364 304]|access-date=29 August 2017|language=en}}

• John Campbell Henry (1787–1857), who married Mary Nevett Steele (1789–1873), the daughter of James Steele (1760–1816) and a sister of U.S. Rep. John Nevett Steele and Isaac Nevett Steele, a Baltimore lawyer.
• Francis Jenkins Henry (b. 1789), who died unmarried soon after becoming of age.

He died in Dorchester County, at Weston, the same estate where he had been born. Henry is buried in Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery in Cambridge.

Henry was a grandfather to John and Mary's eight children, John Francis Henry (1813–1847), Dr. James Winfield Henry (1815–1889), Francis Jenkins Henry (1816–1902), Catherine Henry Lloyd (1818–1886), Daniel Maynadier Henry (1823–1899), Isabella Elizabeth Henry Steele (1825–1912), Mary Henry Goldsborough (1828–1911), Rider Henry (1828–1900), and Charlotte Augusta Page Henry Goldsborough (1834–1908).

;Notes

{{reflist|30em}}

;Sources

• [http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=H000508 Henry’s Congressional biography]
• [http://nabbhistory.salisbury.edu/resources/wroten/wroten_henry_family.html John Henry – Delmarva Heritage Series]

{{S-start}}

{{s-par|us-sen}}

{{U.S. Senator box | before = Position established | state=Maryland| class=3 | years = 1789–1797 | after = James Lloyd|alongside=Charles Carroll, Richard Potts, John E. Howard}}

{{s-off}}

{{Succession box| before = John Hoskins Stone |title=Governor of Maryland | years = 1797–1798 | after = Benjamin Ogle}}

{{S-end}}

{{Governors of Maryland}}

{{USSenMD}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Henry, John (Maryland politician)}}

Category:1750 births

Category:1798 deaths

Category:People from Dorchester County, Maryland

Category:American people of Scottish descent

Category:American Episcopalians

Category:Continental Congressmen from Maryland

Category:Pro-Administration Party United States senators from Maryland

Category:Federalist Party United States senators from Maryland

Category:Maryland Democratic-Republicans

Category:Maryland state senators

Category:Members of the Maryland House of Delegates

Category:Governors of Maryland

Category:Democratic-Republican Party state governors of the United States

Category:Candidates in the 1796 United States presidential election

Category:Princeton University alumni

Category:18th-century United States senators