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Senate Years of Service: 1789-1791 Party: Anti-Administration
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MACLAY, William, (brother of Samuel Maclay and uncle of William Plunkett Maclay),
a Senator from Pennsylvania; born in New Garden, Chester County, Pa., July 20,
1737; pursued classical studies; served as a lieutenant in an expedition to Fort Duquesne in 1758, and
in other expeditions against the French and Indians; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1760;
became a surveyor in the employ of the Penn family; prothonotary and clerk of the courts of
Northumberland County in the 1770s; served in the Continental Army as a commissary in the
Revolutionary War; frequent member of the State legislature in the 1780s; Indian commissioner, judge
of the court of common pleas, and member of the executive council; elected to the United States
Senate and served from March 4, 1789, to March 3, 1791; retired to his farm in Dauphin, Pa.;
member, State house of representatives 1795, and reelected in 1796 and 1797; presidential elector in
1796; county judge 1801-1803; member, State house of representatives 1803; died in Harrisburg,
Dauphin County, Pa., April 16, 1804; interment in Old Paxtang Church Cemetery.
BibliographyDictionary of American Biography;
Maclay, William. The Journal of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates. Documentary History of the First Federal Congress of the United States of America, 4
March 1789-3 March 1791, vol. 9. Edited by Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988; Trees, Andy. The Diary of William Maclay and Political
Manners in the First Congress. Pennsylvania History 69:2 (2002): 210-229.
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