Representative John Thomas Spriggs

John Thomas Spriggs (April 5, 1825 – December 23, 1888) was an American lawyer and Democratic politician who served two terms as a U.S. Representative from New York from 1883 to 1887. His congressional service took place during a significant period in American history, and he participated actively in the legislative process while representing the interests of his New York constituents.

Spriggs was born in Peterborough, England, on April 5, 1825. In 1836 he immigrated to the United States with his parents, who settled in Whitesboro, Oneida County, New York. Growing up in upstate New York, he became part of a community that was experiencing economic and political development in the decades before the Civil War, a setting that helped shape his later interest in public affairs and the law.

He pursued higher education at Hamilton College and subsequently enrolled at Union College in Schenectady, New York, from which he graduated in 1848. In the same year, he completed his legal studies, was admitted to the bar, and commenced the practice of law in Whitesboro. His early legal career quickly led him into public service at the county level. In 1853 he was appointed prosecuting attorney of Oneida County, and in 1854 he served as county treasurer, positions that established his reputation as a capable lawyer and administrator in local government.

Spriggs’s political involvement expanded as he became more prominent in Democratic Party circles. He served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1860, a pivotal convention held on the eve of the Civil War, and later returned as a delegate in 1872 and 1880, reflecting his continuing influence within the party. Locally, he was elected mayor of Utica, New York, serving two non-consecutive terms in 1868 and 1880. His mayoral service in this growing industrial city further solidified his standing as a leading Democratic figure in central New York.

Building on his local and party leadership, Spriggs was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1883, to March 3, 1887. During his two terms in office, he contributed to the legislative process at the national level and represented the interests of his New York constituents at a time of significant economic and political change in the United States. In the Forty-ninth Congress he served as chairman of the Committee on Accounts, a position that entrusted him with oversight of certain administrative and financial matters of the House. He sought reelection in 1886 to the Fiftieth Congress but was unsuccessful.

After leaving Congress in 1887, Spriggs returned to New York and resumed the practice of law, continuing the profession that had underpinned his public career. He remained in Utica, where he had long been a prominent civic and political figure. John Thomas Spriggs died in Utica on December 23, 1888. He was interred in Whitesboro Cemetery in Whitesboro, New York, the community where he had first settled as a young immigrant and begun his legal and public life.