Representative Joseph Weeks

Joseph Weeks (February 13, 1773 – August 4, 1845) was a United States Representative from New Hampshire and a long-serving local and state official in New England. He was the grandfather of Joseph Weeks Babcock, who represented Wisconsin in the United States Congress from 1893 to 1907, thus establishing a multigenerational tradition of congressional service within his family.

Weeks was born in Warwick, Massachusetts, where he attended the common schools typical of rural New England in the late eighteenth century. Little is recorded about his parents or early family life, but his upbringing in a small Massachusetts town placed him within the agrarian and civic culture that shaped many early American public figures. As a young man he moved north to Richmond, in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, a frontier community at the time, where he engaged in agricultural pursuits. Farming remained the basis of his livelihood and social standing, anchoring his later roles in local and state government.

In Richmond, Weeks quickly became involved in town affairs. He served as town clerk of Richmond from 1802 to 1822, a twenty-year tenure that reflected both the trust of his neighbors and his familiarity with local land, property, and civil records. The position of town clerk in early nineteenth-century New England was central to community governance, involving the maintenance of vital records, town meeting minutes, and legal documents, and it provided Weeks with an enduring role in the civic life of the town.

Weeks also developed a substantial career in the New Hampshire state legislature. He served multiple, nonconsecutive terms in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, sitting in that body in 1807–1809, 1812, 1813, 1821–1826, 1830, and 1832–1834. Over these many sessions he participated in the legislative work of a state undergoing economic and political change in the early republic and Jacksonian eras. His repeated elections suggest a durable base of support among his constituents in Richmond and the surrounding area, and they marked him as one of the more experienced legislators in the state’s lower house.

In addition to his legislative service, Weeks held judicial office at the county level. He served as an associate judge of the court of common pleas in 1823 and again in 1827. The court of common pleas in New Hampshire handled a wide range of civil and lesser criminal matters, and his appointment to the bench indicated recognition of his judgment and standing in the community. Balancing judicial responsibilities with his ongoing agricultural pursuits and legislative duties, Weeks exemplified the citizen-official common in early nineteenth-century American public life.

Weeks’s long record in local and state government culminated in his election to the United States House of Representatives. He was elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-fourth Congress and was reelected as a Democrat to the Twenty-fifth Congress, serving from March 4, 1835, to March 3, 1839. His affiliation first with the Jacksonian movement and then with the Democratic Party placed him within the dominant national political coalition of the era, aligned with the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic successors. Representing New Hampshire at a time of intense debate over banking, internal improvements, and federal power, Weeks participated in the legislative business of the House during a formative period in the development of the two-party system.

After leaving Congress at the close of the Twenty-fifth Congress in 1839, Weeks returned to New Hampshire. Although specific details of his later activities are sparse, it is consistent with his earlier life that he resumed his agricultural pursuits and remained a respected figure in his community. He died in Winchester, New Hampshire, on August 4, 1845. His life and career, rooted in small-town New England and extending to the national legislature, reflected the pathways by which local leaders in the early United States rose to positions of broader responsibility, and his legacy was carried forward by his grandson’s subsequent service in Congress.