Representative Jonathan Ogden Moseley

Jonathan Ogden Moseley (April 9, 1762 – September 9, 1838) was a Federalist member of the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut during the early national period. He was born in East Haddam, Connecticut, the only child of Thomas Moseley, a physician, and Phebe Ogden. Raised in a professional household in colonial Connecticut, he came of age during the American Revolution, an era that shaped the generation of leaders who would later help organize the young republic’s political institutions.

Moseley pursued a classical education and attended Yale College, from which he graduated in 1780. His graduation coincided with the closing years of the Revolutionary War, and he entered adulthood at a time when the new nation was defining its legal and political frameworks. After Yale, he studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of law in his native East Haddam. His legal training and early professional work in a small Connecticut community provided the foundation for a long career in public service at both the state and national levels.

Moseley’s public career began in state and local offices. He was elected a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives, serving from 1794 to 1804, a decade in which the state’s Federalist leadership was influential in shaping Connecticut’s response to national issues under the administrations of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Concurrently, he served as justice of the peace of East Haddam from 1794 to 1817, a role that combined judicial and administrative responsibilities and placed him at the center of local governance and dispute resolution. His legal reputation led to his appointment as state’s attorney of Middlesex County, a position he held from 1801 to 1805, in which he represented the state in criminal prosecutions. In addition to his civil responsibilities, Moseley held a military commission as colonel of the Twenty-fourth Regiment of the Connecticut Militia in 1802, reflecting the common practice of New England professionals assuming leadership roles in the citizen militia.

Building on this record of state and local service, Moseley was elected as a Federalist to the Ninth and to the seven succeeding Congresses, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1805, to March 3, 1821. His sixteen years in Congress spanned the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, encompassing such defining events as the Embargo Act, the War of 1812, and the debates over internal improvements and the expansion of slavery. As a Federalist representative from Connecticut, he was aligned with a party that generally favored a strong national government, commercial interests, and a cautious approach to territorial expansion. During this period, Connecticut’s congressional delegation was known for its opposition to certain Jeffersonian and Madisonian policies, and Moseley’s long tenure suggests a stable base of support in his district and a consistent role in articulating Federalist positions in the House.

Moseley’s congressional service concluded when he left office on March 3, 1821, at the end of the Sixteenth Congress, as the Federalist Party was declining nationally in the aftermath of the “Era of Good Feelings” and the rise of new political alignments. After leaving Congress, he moved westward to Saginaw, in what was then the Michigan Territory, reflecting a broader pattern of New Englanders seeking opportunity in the developing regions of the Old Northwest. In Saginaw he continued the practice of law, bringing decades of legal and legislative experience to a frontier community that was in the early stages of settlement and institutional development.

Jonathan Ogden Moseley remained in Saginaw, Michigan, engaged in his profession until his death on September 9, 1838. His career traced the trajectory of an early American lawyer-politician who moved from local and state offices to long service in the national legislature, and then to the expanding western territories, participating in the legal and political life of the United States from the Revolutionary era through the first decades of the nineteenth century.