Representative Presley Underwood Ewing

Presley Underwood Ewing (September 1, 1822 – September 27, 1854) was a United States Representative from Kentucky during the early 1850s, serving as a member of the Whig Party in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. He was born in Russellville, Logan County, Kentucky, where he spent his childhood and early youth. Raised in a region that was then a developing center of commerce and agriculture in south-central Kentucky, he attended the local public schools and pursued preparatory studies that enabled him to enter college at a relatively young age.

Ewing continued his education at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, one of the state’s leading institutions of higher learning. He was graduated from Centre College in 1840, when he was not yet twenty years old. Intending to enter the legal profession, he enrolled in the law school of Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, which at the time was a prominent training ground for many of the region’s political and legal figures. He completed his legal studies there and was graduated in 1843. Seeking to broaden his intellectual and professional horizons beyond the law, Ewing then turned to religious and theological study, spending the years 1845 and 1846 at the Baptist Seminary at Newton, Massachusetts (later known as Newton Theological Institution), where he studied theology.

After his period of theological study in Massachusetts, Ewing returned to his native Kentucky and established a law practice in Russellville. His legal work placed him in close contact with the civic and economic life of Logan County and helped lay the foundation for his entry into public office. Building on his professional standing and local reputation, he was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, where he served as a member in 1848 and 1849. In the state legislature he participated in the deliberations of a body that was grappling with issues of internal improvements, state finance, and the broader sectional tensions that were beginning to shape national politics.

Ewing’s service in the Kentucky House of Representatives led to his elevation to national office as a member of the Whig Party, which at that time was one of the two major political parties in the United States and was particularly strong in Kentucky. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-second Congress and was subsequently re-elected to the Thirty-third Congress. His tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives began on March 4, 1851. During his time in Congress, he served amid the turbulent political climate that followed the Compromise of 1850, as debates over slavery, territorial expansion, and states’ rights increasingly dominated the national agenda. As a Kentucky Whig, he was part of a delegation from a border state whose representatives often sought to balance competing sectional interests.

Ewing continued to serve in Congress until his untimely death in office. While still a sitting member of the Thirty-third Congress, he died on September 27, 1854, in the town of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, a community known for the nearby Mammoth Cave system in south-central Kentucky. His death brought an abrupt end to a promising political career that had progressed rapidly from local legal practice to the state legislature and then to the national stage. Following his death, he was interred in Maple Grove Cemetery in his hometown of Russellville, Kentucky, returning in burial to the community where his life and public career had begun.