William Maclay, First United States Senator, Born in Chester, July 20, 1737

William Maclay, son of Charles and Eleanor Query Maclay, was born July 20, 1737, in New Garden Township, Chester County, Pa. He attended the classical school of the Reverend John Blair, in Chester County. He studied law and was admitted to practice at the York County bar in 1760. During the French and Indian War he served as a lieutenant in Colonel Hugh Mercer’s battalion, and distinguished himself during General Forbes expedition in 1758. In 1763 he participated at the Battle of Bushy Run, and during the subsequent progress of Colonel Bouquet’s campaign was stationed in command of a company at one of the stockades on the route of the expedition.

On account of this service he never practiced his profession. Much of his time was taken up in surveying lands allotted to officers, but at a later period Governor John Penn was instrumental in having him admitted to the Cumberland County bar, and for a short time he acted as Prothonotary.

At the close of the French and Indian War he visited England and had an interview with Thomas Penn, one of the Proprietaries, relative to surveys in parts of the Province, and on his return became an assistant of Surveyor General Lukens on the frontier.

In April, 1769, he married Mary McClure Harris, daughter of John Harris, the founder of Harrisburg.

On the organization of Northumberland County March 21, 1772, he was appointed Prothonotary and Clerk of the Courts.

In July, 1772, he laid out the town of Sunbury and erected for himself a fine stone house, which, with modern improvements, is still standing.^[5]

At the outset of the Revolution, although an officer of the Proprietary Government, William Maclay took a prominent and active part in favor of independence, not only assisting in equipping and forwarding troops to the Continental Army, but marched with the associators which participated in the Battles of Trenton and Princeton. He held the position of assistant commissary of purchases.

During the “Great Runaway,” following the Wyoming massacre, July 3, 1778, William Maclay fled with his family from Sunbury to Harris’ Ferry, and in a letter to the president of the Executive Council he gave a very graphic picture of the distress. Again after the attack and destruction of Fort Freeland by the British, Tories and Indians, July 49728, 1779, Maclay again wrote to the seat of government in which he described the forlorn situation of the frontiers. In a later letter he deplored the removal of soldiers from the West Branch Valley, where the Indians had committed such terrible depredations.

In 1781 he was elected to the Assembly, and from that time forward he filled the various offices of member of the Supreme Executive Council, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, deputy surveyor, etc. After the Revolution he made a visit to England in the interest of the Penn family.

In January, 1789, he was elected to the United States Senate, taking his seat there as the first Senator from Pennsylvania. He drew the short term, and his position terminated March 3, 1791, his colleague, Robert Morris, securing the long term.

Maclay’s election to this body raised him upon a higher plane of political activity, but contact with the Federal chiefs of the young Republic only strengthened his political convictions, which, formed by long intercourse with the people of Central Pennsylvania, were intensely democratic.

Maclay differed with the opinions of President Washington; he did not approve of the state and ceremony attendant upon the intercourse of the President with Congress, he flatly objected to the presence of the President in the Senate while business was being transacted, and in that chamber boldly spoke against his policy in the immediate presence of President Washington.

Maclay was the original promoter and later the actual founder of the Democratic Party. Long before Thomas Jefferson’s return from Europe, William Maclay assumed an independent position, and in his short career of only two years in the Senate propounded ideas and gathered about him elements to form the opposition which developed with the meeting of Congress at Philadelphia, October 24, 1791, in a division of the people into two great parties, the Federalists and Democrats, when, for the first time, appeared an open and organized opposition to the Administration.

The funding of the public debt and chartering the United States Bank were opposed by Maclay, even at a sacrifice of personal popularity, for he was succeeded in the Senate by James Ross, a pronounced Federalist.

While in the Senate Maclay preserved notes of his discussions, both in open and executive sessions, with observations upon the social customs of the statesmen of the Republic, which have since been published.

On his retirement from the Senate William Maclay resided on his farm adjoining Harrisburg, where he erected a fine stone mansion, afterward, for many years, occupied by the Harrisburg Academy.

In 1795 he was elected a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and was again elected in 1803. He was a presidential 498candidate in 1796, and from 1801 to 1803 was one of the Associate Judges of Dauphin County.

William Maclay’s brother, Samuel, was almost as distinguished a citizen as his older brother. He, too, was a soldier in the Continental Army, a surveyor and statesman. He served as Associate Judge, was in the Fourth Congress, State Senate and Speaker of that body, and December 14, 1802, he was elected to the United States Senate. William and Samuel Maclay are the only brothers to sit in that body.

William Maclay was the father of nine children. He died at his home at Harrisburg April 16, 1804, and was interred in the old Paxton Presbyterian Church graveyard at Paxtang. An elegant stone marks the final resting place of this distinguished Pennsylvanian.