Representative Rufus McIntire

Rufus McIntire (December 19, 1784 – April 28, 1866) was a United States lawyer, captain of U.S. Army artillery in the War of 1812, congressman, U.S. Marshal, land agent, and hostage/prisoner in the Aroostook War. He was born on December 19, 1784, at York, then in the District of Maine, which at the time formed part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Raised in what was then a frontier region, he came of age during the early national period, when questions of federal authority, territorial expansion, and party formation were central to American political life.

McIntire received his early education at Berwick Academy in Maine, one of the region’s leading preparatory schools. He then attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, from which he was graduated in 1809. After college he pursued legal training in the traditional manner of reading law, studying for three years under John Holmes of Alfred, Maine, a prominent attorney and later a United States senator. Like his legal mentor Holmes, McIntire was in his early years a committed Jeffersonian, aligning himself with the Democratic-Republican tradition that emphasized limited federal government and agrarian interests.

In 1812 McIntire was admitted to the York County Bar Association and began the practice of law. That same year, however, the outbreak of the War of 1812 with Great Britain altered the course of his early career. He was commissioned as a captain of a United States Army artillery company in the 3rd Regiment and served in the northern theater of the war. His command was deployed in northern New York State and into Canada, where his troops took part in significant engagements at Sackets Harbor, the Battle of Crysler’s Farm, and the defense of Fort Oswego. His wartime experiences later became the basis for a published account, “The War of Northern New York: The Observations of Captain Rufus McIntire,” which provides a firsthand narrative of the conflict in that region.

Following the war, McIntire resumed his legal practice and entered public life in the District of Maine. He was a voting member of the Brunswick Convention of 1816, a key regional gathering that reflected growing sentiment in favor of Maine’s separation from Massachusetts. In 1819 he married Nancy Rolfe Hannaford; the couple had eight children, three of whom died in infancy. After Nancy’s death on February 2, 1830, McIntire married her sister, Mary B. Hannaford, in 1832, and they had two additional children. In 1820, the year Maine achieved statehood, he was elected to the Maine House of Representatives, participating in the formative legislative work of the new state. His growing reputation as a lawyer and legislator led to his selection, in early 1827, along with former governor William King, as one of Maine’s commissioners to establish the boundary with New Hampshire.

McIntire’s national political career began later in 1827, when he was elected to the Twentieth United States Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Representative William Burleigh. Initially, in his first congressional campaign, he ran on the Adams (Anti-Jackson) ticket, reflecting the divisions of the era between supporters of John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Over time, however, he aligned himself firmly with the Jacksonian movement. As a member of the Jackson Party representing Maine, he contributed to the legislative process during four terms in office. He served in the Twentieth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, and Twenty-third Congresses from September 10, 1827, through 1835, during a significant period in American history marked by debates over tariffs, internal improvements, the Bank of the United States, and the expansion of democratic participation. In his succeeding terms he ran and served as a stalwart Jacksonian Democrat, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his Maine constituents in the House of Representatives.

After leaving Congress in 1835, McIntire remained active in Maine politics and Democratic Party affairs. In 1837 he was a candidate for the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor of Maine; at the state convention he finished second to Gorham Parks by a vote of 137 to 167, narrowly missing the nomination. He subsequently accepted appointment as State Land Agent in 1839 and 1840, a position of particular sensitivity because of the unsettled northeastern boundary between Maine and the British colony of New Brunswick. In this capacity he was charged with protecting Maine’s timber interests in the disputed Aroostook region.

McIntire’s tenure as State Land Agent placed him at the center of the confrontation that came to be known as the Aroostook War. To combat the intrusion of Canadian lumbering operations into territory claimed by Maine, he led a posse of militiamen into the disputed Aroostook Valley. On the night of February 12, 1839, his cabin was surrounded by armed Canadians, and he was taken prisoner and transported to jail in Fredericton, New Brunswick. His seizure as a hostage/prisoner heightened tensions between the United States and Great Britain, prompting the mobilization of large militia forces in both Maine and New Brunswick. Although the so‑called Aroostook War ultimately ended without major bloodshed, the incident underscored the volatility of the boundary dispute that was later resolved by the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842.

In the later stages of his public career, McIntire held several important federal appointments. He was appointed United States Marshal for the District of Maine in January 1849 by Democratic President James K. Polk. His tenure in that office was brief; following the inauguration of Whig President Zachary Taylor in March 1849, McIntire was removed from the marshalship as part of the customary partisan turnover in federal patronage. He returned to federal service under another Democratic administration when President Franklin Pierce appointed him Surveyor of Customs at Portland, Maine, a post he held from 1853 through 1857. These positions reflected his continued prominence within the Democratic Party and his standing as a trusted public official in Maine.

Rufus McIntire spent his final years in Parsonsfield, Maine, a community with which he had long-standing ties and where he had been regarded as a leading citizen. He died there on April 28, 1866, at the age of 82. His life spanned the early republic, the rise of Jacksonian democracy, and the sectional tensions that preceded the Civil War, and his career encompassed military service, state and national legislative work, and significant roles in the administration of federal and state law and land policy.