Samuel F. Hersey

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Samuel Freeman Hersey (April 12, 1812–February 3, 1875) was a politician from the U.S. state of Maine. He served in the Maine State Senate and as the United States Representative from Maine.

He 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 merchandise business in Lincoln and in Milford; and engaged in the lumber business in Stillwater and in Bangor, where he eventually settled. 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 member of the Republican National Committee 1864-1868. He was elected a member of the Maine State Senate in 1868 and 1869.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Maine in 1870. Hersey was elected as a Republican 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. His interment in Mount Hope Cemetery.

Hersey is often styled "General Hersey" in contemporary documents, which is probably a militia title dating to the time of the Aroostook War. He was a close friend and patron of Senator and later Vice President Hannibal Hamlin.

Hersey left his fortune to the city of Bangor, Maine which used it to found the Bangor Public Library. A large portrait of Hersey hangs there.