Representative Solomon Newton Pettis

Solomon Newton Pettis (October 10, 1827 – September 18, 1900) was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. He was born in Lenox, Ashtabula County, Ohio, where he spent his early years before pursuing a legal career. Little is recorded about his family background or early schooling, but his subsequent professional accomplishments indicate a solid education that prepared him for the study and practice of law.

Pettis studied law in his youth and was admitted to the bar in 1848. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Meadville, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, where he commenced the practice of law. Meadville became his long-term home and the center of his professional and political life. As a young attorney, he established himself in the local legal community and built the practice that would sustain him throughout his career, apart from periods of public service.

By the late 1850s and early 1860s, Pettis had become active in the emerging Republican Party. He served as a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention, which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency, indicating his early alignment with the party’s anti-slavery and Unionist platform. On March 21, 1861, President Lincoln appointed Pettis an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Colorado Territory. Although he traveled to Denver and was present in the territory for a time, he never effectively assumed his judicial duties. He departed Denver sometime after July 30, 1861, without ever presiding over the court to which he had been appointed, and he remained absent until his replacement, Allen A. Bradford, was appointed associate justice in June 1862. Following this episode, Pettis returned to Meadville and resumed the practice of law.

Pettis’s most prominent public role came in the legislative branch. As a member of the Republican Party representing Pennsylvania, he contributed to the legislative process during one term in office. He was elected as a Republican to the Fortieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Representative Darwin A. Finney, thus entering the U.S. House of Representatives during a significant period in American history, in the aftermath of the Civil War and during Reconstruction. In Congress he participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of his Pennsylvania constituents at the national level. His service in the Fortieth Congress placed him among those lawmakers grappling with the reintegration of the Southern states and the reshaping of federal policy in the postwar era.

Pettis was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1868 and therefore served only that single term in the House of Representatives. After leaving Congress, he returned once again to Meadville, where he resumed his legal practice. His career thus alternated between public office and private law practice, with Meadville remaining the constant base of his professional and personal life.

In 1878, Pettis reentered public service in the diplomatic sphere. He was appointed United States Minister to Bolivia on September 4, 1878, representing American interests in that South American nation. He served in this diplomatic post until November 1, 1879. After completing his service as Minister to Bolivia, he returned to Pennsylvania and again engaged in the practice of law in Meadville, continuing in his profession through his later years.

Solomon Newton Pettis died in Meadville, Pennsylvania, on September 18, 1900. He was interred in Greendale Cemetery in Meadville. His life reflected the pattern of many nineteenth-century American lawyers who combined local legal practice with periods of national service in judicial, legislative, and diplomatic roles, and his career linked the politics of the Civil War and Reconstruction era with the expanding international engagement of the United States in the late nineteenth century.