Christopher Gore

Christopher Gore
United States Senator from Massachusetts
In office May 5, 1813 – May 30, 1816
Preceded by	James Lloyd
Succeeded by	Eli P. Ashmun
8th Governor of Massachusetts
In office May 1, 1808 – June 10, 1810
Lieutenant	David Cobb
Preceded by	James Sullivan Levi Lincoln, Sr. Acting Governor of Massachusetts
Succeeded by	Elbridge Gerry
United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts
In office 1789–1796
Preceded by	Position created
Succeeded by	Harrison Gray Otis
Personal details
Born	September 21, 1758 Waltham, Massachusetts
Died	March 1, 1827 (aged 68) Waltham, Massachusetts
Political party	Federalist
Alma mater	Harvard University
Military service
Service/branch	Continental Army
Battles/wars	American Revolutionary War

Christopher Gore (September 21, 1758 – March 1, 1827) was a prominent Massachusetts lawyer, Federalist politician, and U.S. diplomat.

Biography

Gore was born in Boston in 1758, the tenth of 13 children of Frances and John Gore, a successful merchant and artisan. He attended Boston Latin School, graduated from Harvard College in 1776, and served in the Continental Army as a clerk with an artillery regiment. After the war, he became a Boston lawyer and in 1785 married Rebecca Amory Payne, daughter of a wealthy merchant and maritime insurer as well as a director of the Bank of Massachusetts.

One of the young men whom he trained and mentored in his law practice was Daniel Webster.

In 1788, Gore was elected a delegate to the 1789 Massachusetts convention to ratify the Constitution. He was elected a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1788–1789, and again in 1808).

President George Washington appointed Gore the first United States Attorney for Massachusetts, in which post he served from 1789 to 1796.

In 1796, Washington appointed Gore as a commissioner to the negotiations in Britain that resulted in the Jay Treaty. He served in that post from 1796 to 1803. After his friend Rufus King resigned from the post of ambassador, Gore headed the London embassy as chargé d'affaires for two months in 1803-1804.

Soon after his return to the United States in 1804, Gore was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. He ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Massachusetts in 1807 and 1808. He won a one-year term in 1809. He served as an overseer of Harvard University from 1810 to 1815 and then as a fellow of the university from 1812 to 1820. Harvard's first library building, a Gothic structure built in 1838 of Quincy granite, was named Gore Hall in his honor.

In the spring of 1813, he was appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of James Lloyd. He served from May 5, 1813 to May 30, 1816. He retired to his country home in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1816, where he remained until 1822 when declining health forced him to return to Boston. He died in 1827 in Waltham and is buried in the Granary Burying Ground, Boston.

See also

• Gore Place, his country home in Waltham, Massachusetts

Sources

• Alden Bradford, Biographical Notices of Distinguished Men in New England: Statesmen, Patriots, Physicians, Lawyers, Clergymen, and Mechanics (Boston, 1842), 205-6, available online, accessed December 11, 2011
• Helen Pinkney, Christopher Gore, Federalist of Massachusetts, 1758-1827 (Waltham, MA: Gore Place Society, 1969)
• "Memoir of the Late Hon. Christopher Gore, of Waltham, Mass.," Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, vol. 3, 191-209, available online, accessed December 11, 2011

External links

• Christopher Gore at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Official Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Biography
• Gore Place, home of Christopher Gore

Political offices
Preceded by Levi Lincoln, Sr. Acting Governor	Governor of Massachusetts May 1, 1809 – June 10, 1810	Succeeded by Elbridge Gerry
United States Senate
Preceded by James Lloyd	United States Senator (Class 1) from Massachusetts May 5, 1813 – May 30, 1816 Served alongside: Joseph B. Varnum	Succeeded by Eli P. Ashmun