Biography
A Senator from Mississippi; born in Anson County, North Carolina, on January 14, 1773; completed preparatory studies; studied law; admitted to the bar and practiced; register of the land office for the Territory of Mississippi in 1805; secretary of the Territory 1805; Acting Governor 1806; reappointed secretary 1807; Acting Governor 1809; collector of customs at New Orleans 1810; delegate to the State constitutional convention; upon the admission of Mississippi as a State into the Union in 1817 was elected as a Democratic Republican to the United States Senate; reelected as a Jackson Republican (later Jacksonian) in 1823 and served from December 10, 1817, to March 3, 1829; chairman, Committee on Public Lands (Sixteenth Congress); moved to Tennessee, where he died, in Nashville, on December 7, 1850.
Courtesy of Biographical Directory of the United States Congress