Epaphroditus Champion

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Epaphroditus Champion (April 6, 1756 - December 22, 1834) was a U.S. Congressman from Connecticut, serving from 1807 to 1818. He was born in Colchester on April 6, 1756 and educated by private tutors and in the common schools.

Connecticut Governor Trumbull directed Connecticut state commissary, Colonel Henry Champion, to collect cattle and drive them to Valley Forge. Champion and his son Epaphroditus gathered a herd of 300 at Hartford and drove them west to King's Ferry, across the Hudson, into New Jersey, across the Delaware to Washington's famished troops west of the Schuylkill. They were devoured in 5 days prompting Champion the younger to remark that they were so thoroughly eaten that "you might have made a knife out of every bone" (as per Connecticut's War Governor: Jonathan Trumbull, by David Roth, pp.45-46).

He then served as captain in the Twenty-fourth Regiment of State militia 1784-1792, as major 1793 and 1794, as lieutenant colonel 1795-1798, and as brigadier general of the Seventh Brigade 1800-1803. He became a merchant, shipowner, exporter, and importer, a member of the State assembly 1791-1806, and elected as a Federalist to the Tenth and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1807-March 3, 1817). He resumed his former business activities after leaving Congress but soon retired, with interment in Riverview Cemetery.