Joseph Hemphill

Joseph Hemphill.

Joseph Hemphill (January 10, 1770 – May 29, 1842) was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Hemphill was born in Thornbury Township, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia in 1791. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1793 and commenced practice in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1797 to 1800. He also owned the Historic Strawberry Mansion in Fairmount Park and used it as his summer home from 1821 until his death in 1842.

Hemphill was elected as a Federalist to the Seventh Congress. He moved to Philadelphia in 1803, and again was a member of the State House of Representatives in 1805. He was appointed the first president judge of the district court of the city and county of Philadelphia. He was again elected as a Federalist to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Congresses, elected as a Jackson Federalist to the Eighteenth Congress, and reelected as a Jacksonian to the Nineteenth Congress, and served until his resignation in 1826. He was again elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-first Congress. He was a member of the State House of Representatives in 1831 and 1832, and died in Philadelphia in 1842. Interment in Laurel Hill Cemetery.

His wife, Margaret Coleman Hemphill, was the sister of Anne Caroline Coleman, the fiancée of then-future President James Buchanan who too served as a U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania.

Sources

• Joseph Hemphill at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• The Political Graveyard
• Joseph Hemphill at Find a Grave