Francis Granger - Biography

Biography

Granger was born in Suffield, Connecticut, and pursued classical studies at and graduated from Yale College in 1814. He then moved with his father to Canandaigua, New York in 1814, where he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1816 and commenced practice. He married Cornelia Rutson VanRensselaer. They had one son, Gideon Granger II, born in 1821, and an unnamed daughter whom died with her mother in childbirth in 1823. His home at Canandaigua from 1817 to 1827, now known as the Francis Granger House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

Granger was a member of the State Assembly from 1826 to 1828 and from 1830 to 1832. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1828, and in both 1830 and 1832 was an unsuccessful National Republican candidate for Governor of New York. In 1836, he was unsuccessful as a Whig and Anti-Masonic candidate for Vice President, which he narrowly lost when it was voted by the U.S. Senate that Richard M. Johnson was the rightful winner, and also unsuccessful as a Whig candidate for election to the 25th Congress.

He was, however, elected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the 24th Congress (March 4, 1835 to March 3, 1837), and was elected as a Whig to the 26th and 27th Congresses (March 4, 1839 to March 5, 1841).

Granger was appointed Postmaster General in the Cabinet of President William Henry Harrison and served from March 6 to September 18, 1841, after which he was again elected to the Twenty-Seventh Congress in a special election to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of John Greig. He served from November 27, 1841 to March 3, 1843 and was not a candidate for reelection in 1842.

A supporter of the Compromise of 1850, Granger led the pro-Fillmore group which became known as the Silver Gray Whigs after Granger's own silver hair. This faction would remain in conflict with the anti-Compromise Sewardites until the collapse of the Whig Party in the state in 1855.

Chairman of the Whig National Executive Committee from 1856 to 1860, Granger joined in the call for the convention of the Constitutional Union Party that was held in May 1860. He was then a member of the peace convention of 1861 held in Washington, D.C. in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending war. He died in Canandaigua and was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.

Today, he is the namesake of Francis Granger Middle School, a junior high school in Aurora, Illinois.