Lorenzo De Medici Sweat

Lorenzo De Medici Sweat (May 26, 1818 – July 26, 1898) was a U.S. Representative from Maine.

Early life and education

He was born in Parsonsfield, Maine, where he attended Parsonsfield Seminary, a Free Will Baptist school. Sweat attended Bowdoin College, from which he graduated in 1837, then Harvard University, graduating in 1840, having studied law. He began to practice law in New Orleans, then the fourth largest city in the United States.

Marriage and family

After this, Sweat returned to Maine and settled in Portland. He married Margaret Jane Mussey in 1849. They did not have children.

Political career

Sweat held various local offices including that of the Portland city solicitor from 1856 to 1860. He served as a member of the State Senate in 1862, and was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-eighth Congress and served from March 4, 1863, to March 3, 1865, when he was defeated for re-election to the Thirty-ninth Congress. He was later defeated for election to the Fortieth Congress.

He later was a delegate to the Union National Convention held in Philadelphia in 1868, and to the 1872 Democratic National Convention, where he was chosen as a member of the Democratic National Committee and served for four years until 1876.

He was an honorary commissioner to the World's Exposition in Paris in 1867 and that in Vienna in 1873.

His house in Portland, the McLellan-Sweat Mansion, was later adapted for use as the Portland Museum of Art, following a bequest by his wife. Today it is a National Historic Landmark.

His body is interred in Evergreen Cemetery in Portland, Maine.

References

• Official Congressional biography

External links

• Lorenzo De Medici Sweat at Find a Grave