Representative Charles F. Mitchell

Charles Franklin Mitchell (February 18, 1806 – September 27, 1865) was a United States Representative from New York who served in the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Congresses. A member of the Whig Party during his congressional career and later a Republican, he represented New York’s 33rd Congressional District for two terms at a time of significant political and economic change in the United States, participating in the legislative process and representing the interests of his constituents.

Mitchell was born in Middletown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on February 18, 1806, the son of Walter Mitchell and Hannah (Comly) Mitchell. Raised in the Society of Friends, he was a Quaker and attended the public schools of Pennsylvania. After completing his basic education, he learned the trade of milling and became a journeyman miller, gaining practical experience in a field that would shape his early business career.

In 1828 or 1829, Mitchell settled in Lockport, New York, a growing canal town along the Erie Canal. There he operated a successful grain milling business, which positioned him as a prominent local businessman. In 1829 he was appointed to the volunteer fire department in Lockport, reflecting his early involvement in community affairs. He expanded his interests into other commercial ventures, including participation in the Batavia and Lockport Railroad and the Niagara Suspension Bridge Bank, enterprises that were part of the broader development of transportation and finance in western New York.

On December 2, 1829, Mitchell married Elizabeth F. Ellis in Henrietta, New York. She had been born in Princeton, New Jersey, on October 23, 1809. The couple established their household as his business interests grew, and according to the 1850 United States Census they were the parents of three children: Pierson, Mary, and Josephine. Elizabeth F. Ellis Mitchell survived her husband by more than three decades and died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 24, 1898.

Mitchell became active in politics as a member of the Whig Party and emerged as an early protégé and business partner of Thurlow Weed, one of New York’s most influential Whig leaders. Through this connection and his own standing in Lockport and the surrounding region, he secured election to the United States House of Representatives in 1836 as the Whig Representative from New York’s 33rd District. He was reelected in 1838, serving in the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Congresses from March 4, 1837, to March 3, 1841. During these two terms in Congress, Mitchell took part in the national legislative debates of the late 1830s and early 1840s, a period marked by economic dislocation following the Panic of 1837 and intense partisan conflict between Whigs and Democrats over banking, internal improvements, and executive power. His contemporaries later alleged that during his second term he did not devote his full attention to the business of Congress and did not spend sufficient time in his district, criticisms that reflected both political tensions and expectations of constituent service in that era.

In 1841, shortly after leaving Congress, Mitchell’s career was overshadowed by legal difficulties. He was convicted of forgery later that year, an offense that resulted in a sentence of one year in prison and the imposition of a fine. Owing to ill health, he was paroled before completing his full term of imprisonment, and he was later pardoned. Following this episode, Mitchell left New York and gradually shifted his residence and activities westward and southward.

Mitchell subsequently lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and in northern Kentucky, maintaining his engagement with public affairs even as he moved away from elective office. By the time of the American Civil War, he had established himself in Flemingsburg, Kentucky. Having aligned himself with the Republican Party by this period, in 1860 and 1861 he corresponded with President-elect and then President Abraham Lincoln and members of Lincoln’s administration. In these letters he described the political situation in Kentucky and assessed the prospects for keeping the border state in the Union, offering observations grounded in his local knowledge and prior political experience. Later in the war, Mitchell joined a delegation that appealed to Secretary of State William H. Seward for the release of individuals from the Flemingsburg area who were being held as prisoners on suspicion of Confederate sympathies. Mitchell’s participation in this effort drew upon his personal acquaintance with Seward, formed when both men had been active as Whig politicians in New York.

Charles Franklin Mitchell died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 27, 1865. He was interred at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.