Attorney General: Nathan Clifford
Nathan Clifford was born in Rumney, New Hampshire, on August 18, 1803. He studied at the Haverhill Academy and afterwards at the New Hampton Literary Institution (now the New Hampton School). He read law with Josiah Quincy, III, and was admitted to the bar in 1827. Clifford settled in York County, Maine, and was a member of the Maine legislature from 1830 to 1834 and state attorney general from 1834 to 1838. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms, from 1839 to 1843.
President James K. Polk appointed him Attorney General of the United States on October 17, 1846. Clifford held that office until March 17, 1848. He was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico in July 1848, in which capacity he served until September 1849. In January 1858, Clifford was appointed Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by President James Buchanan. He held this seat until his death on July 25, 1881, in Cornish, Maine.
George Peter Alexander Healy was born in Boston in 1813 and began his artistic career at the age of 17. Largely self-taught, he became internationally known and was patronized by the royal families of the United Kingdom and France. From the 1840s through the 1860s, Healy filled hundreds of commissions throughout Europe and the United States. He was one of the most succesful and prolific portrait painters of the nineteenth century. Healy painted Attorney General Clifford's portrait in 1876. His career had been the subject of several books, including his own, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter. Healy died in 1894.