Richard Spencer (Maryland)

Richard Spencer (October 29, 1796 – September 3, 1868) was an American politician who represented the seventh congressional district of the state of Maryland from 1829 to 1831.

Richard Spencer was born at Spencer Hall, the family plantation in Talbot County, Maryland, and attended the common schools.^[1] He studied law in Baltimore and was admitted to the Talbot County bar in 1819. He moved to his farm, Solitude, near St. Michaels, Maryland in 1822 and engaged in agricultural pursuits. He also served in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1823 to 1825.

Spencer engaged in literary pursuits and, in 1828, he contributed to the establishment of the newspaper Eastern Shore Whig, which he controlled until 1834. The same year, he was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-first Congress and served one term from March 4, 1829 until March 3, 1831. He was unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1830 to the Twenty-second Congress. He served again in the Maryland House of Delegates in 1833 and 1834, but was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1835. He moved to Georgia in 1837 and engaged in cotton planting, and later moved to Alabama in 1852 and settled at Cottage Hill, near Mobile. He died there, but it is unknown exactly where he was interred. He is most likely buried at his estate at Cottage Hill.

References

• Richard Spencer at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Footnotes

1. Spencer was descended from Robert Spencer, an English emigrant who arrived in Maryland in the seventeenth century by way of Virginia and Barbadoes. Robert Spencer's brother was Col. Nicholas Spencer, acting Governor of Virginia.