Attorney General: Levi Lincoln

Levi Lincoln was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, on May 15, 1749. He graduated from Harvard in 1772 and studied law under Joseph Hawley in Northampton. At the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, he joined a unit of the Massachusetts militia for several months. He then practiced law privately in Worcester, steadily rising to prominence in that community. Lincoln served as clerk of the court and judge of probate of Worcester County, commissioner for confiscated estates, and delegate to a convention in Cambridge to frame a state constitution. In 1781, he was elected to the Continental Congress but declined to serve. Lincoln was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1796 and of the Senate in 1797.

In 1800, he was elected to the U.S. Congress and served until March 1801, when President Thomas Jefferson appointed him Attorney General of the United States. He held that office until March 1805. Lincoln was a member of the Council of Massachusetts in 1806 and served as the state’s Lieutenant Governor from 1807 to 1808. He became Governor in 1808 upon the death of the previous Governor but lost the election in 1809 when he ran for a full term of his own. In 1811, he declined an appointment as an Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lincoln died in Worcester, Massachusetts, on April 14, 1820.