Attorney General: Henry D. Gilpin
Henry Dilworth Gilpin was born in Lancaster, England, on April 14, 1801. He attended school near London from 1811 to 1816. After moving to the United States, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819. He read law with Joseph R. Ingersoll and was admitted to the bar in 1822. Gilpin went on to practice law and became secretary of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company, editor of The Atlantic Souvenir, and author of numerous publications. Gilpin was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in 1831 and Solicitor of the U.S. Treasury in 1837.
Henry Gilpin was appointed Attorney General of the United States on January 11, 1840, by President Martin Van Buren. He held that office until March 4, 1841. In the years following his tenure as Attorney General, Gilpin served as president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, vice president of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, director of Girard College, and trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. He died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 29, 1860.
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1807, James Reid Lambdin studied under Edward Miles and Thomas Sully. In 1828, he established the Pittsburgh Museum of Natural History and Gallery of the Fine Arts, which was heralded as the first public exhibit of art in the West. Lambdin also lived and worked in Louisville, Kentucky, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Prominent Americans such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and John Marshall were among his sitters. Lambdin's portrait of Attorney General Gilpin was completed in 1854. He died in 1889.