Richard Coulter (U.S. politician)

Richard Coulter (March, 1788 – April 21, 1852) was a Jacksonian member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Richard Coulter was born in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, a son of state commissioner Eli Coulter and Priscilla Small (1766–1826). Richard attended Jefferson College. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1811, and commenced the practice of his profession in Greensburg, Pennsylvania where he became chief burgess. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1816 to 1820. He then returned to his law practice.

In 1826 Coulter was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the Twentieth Congress and reelected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-first through Twenty-third Congresses. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1834 to the Twenty-fourth Congress. He was elected judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and served from 1846 until his death in 1852 in Greensburg. Interment was in St. Clair Cemetery.

His namesake nephew Richard Coulter was an American Civil War general in the Union Army.

Sources

• Richard Coulter at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• The Political Graveyard
• "From Major General to Major Stockholder", by Jennifer Sopko, Westmoreland History, Summer 2007, page 12.