Representative Elias Keyes

Elias Keyes (April 14, 1758 – July 9, 1844) was an American politician, jurist, and early Vermont settler who served one term as a U.S. Representative from Vermont from 1821 to 1823. He was born in Ashford in the Connecticut Colony, where he attended the common schools before pursuing legal studies by reading law. Coming of age in the final decades of the colonial period, he was shaped by the political and military upheavals surrounding the American Revolution.

During the Revolutionary War, Keyes enlisted in the Continental Army and rose to the rank of sergeant major, participating in the struggle for American independence. After the war, in 1780 he moved north to what would become the state of Vermont, settling first in Barnard. In 1785 he accepted an offer of 400 acres of land in Stockbridge, Vermont, made to whoever would construct the town’s first gristmill and sawmill. By undertaking this enterprise, he became one of the earliest settlers of Stockbridge and played a formative role in the town’s economic development, combining his legal training with practical business pursuits on the frontier.

Keyes’s public career in Vermont began in the closing years of the eighteenth century. He served multiple, nonconsecutive terms in the Vermont House of Representatives, first from 1793 to 1796 and again from 1798 to 1802, returning later for service in 1818, in 1820, and from 1823 to 1825. His legislative work coincided with the period in which Vermont, admitted to the Union in 1791, was consolidating its state institutions and laws. In addition to his legislative duties, he became increasingly prominent in state affairs as a member of the Governor’s Council from 1805 to 1813 and from 1815 to 1817, advising the chief executive on matters of policy and administration. In 1814 he further contributed to the shaping of Vermont’s government as a delegate to the Vermont state constitutional convention.

Alongside his legislative and advisory roles, Keyes pursued a substantial judicial career at the county level. From 1803 until 1814 he served as assistant judge of the Windsor County Court in Vermont, participating in the adjudication of civil and criminal matters during a period of rapid population growth and legal development in the region. He was then elevated to the position of judge of Windsor County, serving from 1815 until 1818. In these judicial posts, he helped to interpret and apply Vermont law in a formative era for the state’s judiciary, while maintaining his standing as a respected local leader.

Keyes’s experience in state and local government led to his election to national office. Identified with the Democratic-Republican Party—often referred to at the time as the Republican Party—he was elected to the Seventeenth United States Congress as a representative from Vermont. He served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1821, to March 3, 1823. During this significant period in American history, marked by the aftermath of the War of 1812 and the so‑called “Era of Good Feelings,” Keyes participated in the federal legislative process and represented the interests of his Vermont constituents in debates over national policy, aligning with the dominant Democratic-Republican majority in Congress.

After leaving Congress, Keyes encountered business reverses and debts that compelled him to leave Vermont temporarily. He moved to Norfolk, New York, where he sought to rebuild his fortunes away from his long-established base in Windsor County. In time, however, he returned to Stockbridge, Vermont, where he was able to restart his gristmill and sawmill operations, reestablishing himself in the community he had helped to found and develop decades earlier.

Elias Keyes spent his later years in Stockbridge, where he remained a figure associated with the town’s early settlement, Vermont’s formative political institutions, and the state’s representation in the national legislature. He died in Stockbridge on July 9, 1844, and was interred in Maplewood Cemetery in that town, closing a life that spanned from the colonial era through the early decades of the United States and encompassed military service, frontier enterprise, judicial responsibility, and legislative leadership at both the state and federal levels.