William Pitt LYNDE, Congress, WI (1817-1885)

LYNDE William Pitt , a Representative from Wisconsin; born in Sherburne, Chenango County, N.Y., December 16, 1817; attended Hamilton Academy and Hamilton College, and was graduated from Yale College in 1838; attended the law department of the New York University for a year and was graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1841; was admitted to the bar in New York in 1841; moved to Wisconsin the same year and settled in Milwaukee; attorney general of Wisconsin in 1844; United States district attorney for Wisconsin in 1845; upon the admission of Wisconsin as a State into the Union was elected as a Democrat to the Thirtieth Congress and served from June 5, 1848, to March 3, 1849; unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1848 to the Thirty-first Congress; unsuccessful candidate for election as associate justice of the State supreme court in 1849; elected mayor of Milwaukee in 1860; member of the State assembly in 1866; served in the State senate 1869 and 1870; elected to the Forty-fourth and Forty-fifth Congresses (March 4, 1875-March 3, 1879); chairman, Committee on Expenditures on Public Buildings (Forty-fifth Congress); one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1876 to conduct the impeachment proceedings against William W. Belknap, Secretary of War in President Grant's Cabinet; was not a candidate for renomination in 1878; withdrew from political life; died in Milwaukee, Wis., December 18, 1885; interment in Forest Home Cemetery.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present