Representative Asa Lyon

Asa Lyon (December 31, 1763 – April 4, 1841) was an American clergyman, jurist, and politician who served as a United States Representative from Vermont. He was born in Pomfret, in the Connecticut Colony, to Jonathan Lyon and Rebecca Maxley Lyon. Raised in a New England farming community, he attended the common schools available in the area, receiving the basic classical and religious instruction typical of the period.

Lyon pursued higher education at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, from which he graduated in 1790. After college he prepared for the ministry as a divinity student under the Reverend Charles Backus in Somers, Connecticut, a noted Congregational theologian of the time. In 1792 Lyon was ordained as pastor of the Congregational Church in Sunderland, Massachusetts, beginning a career that combined religious leadership with growing civic and intellectual responsibilities.

In 1794 Lyon moved to South Hero, in what was then a relatively new settlement in Vermont. There he continued his ministerial work and also studied law, broadening his professional scope beyond the pulpit. He organized the church in South Hero and served as its first pastor from 1802 until 1840, providing nearly four decades of continuous religious leadership to the community. During this period he was also active as a tutor; among his students was Herman R. Beardsley, who later became a Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, reflecting Lyon’s influence on the emerging professional class in Vermont.

Lyon’s public career in Vermont began in the state legislature. He was a member of the Vermont House of Representatives from 1799 to 1802, again from 1804 to 1806, and in 1808, representing the interests of his constituents during the early years of Vermont’s statehood. In 1808 he also served on the Vermont Executive Council, participating in the upper tier of state governance. He was later a town representative from Grand Isle from 1810 until 1813, further embedding himself in local and regional political affairs. At the county level, Lyon served as chief judge of the Grand Isle County Courts from 1805 until 1809, and again in 1813 and 1814, exercising judicial authority in both civil and criminal matters at a time when the legal institutions of the young state were still developing.

As a member of the Federalist Party representing Vermont, Lyon entered national politics during a critical period in American history. He was elected as a Federalist candidate to the Fourteenth United States Congress and served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1815, until March 3, 1817. His service in Congress followed immediately upon the conclusion of the War of 1812 and coincided with the beginning of the so‑called “Era of Good Feelings,” a time of shifting party alignments and debates over national finance, internal improvements, and the balance of federal and state power. During this term he contributed to the legislative process, participating in the democratic governance of the nation and representing the interests of his Vermont constituents in the federal legislature.

Alongside his public and ecclesiastical roles, Lyon maintained a family life in Vermont. He married Esther Newell, and the couple had three children: Esther Lyon, Abigail Lyon, and Newell Lyon. Family and local tradition held that Asa Lyon was a second cousin of the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns, a claim that reflected the persistence of Old World familial connections in early American society, though it has remained more a matter of tradition than documented genealogy.

Lyon continued to reside in South Hero for the remainder of his life, remaining closely identified with the religious, legal, and civic development of Grand Isle County. He retired from active pastoral duties around 1840 after nearly half a century in the ministry. Asa Lyon died in South Hero, Vermont, on April 4, 1841. He was interred at Grand Isle Cemetery in Grand Isle, Vermont, where his burial site marks the resting place of a figure who combined clerical, judicial, and legislative service during the formative decades of both Vermont and the United States.