American public man, born in County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1749. He emigrated to the United States when a boy; after working on a Connecticut farm, he settled in Vermont, where, in 1776, he became lieutenant of the “Green Mountain Boys”; later he was elected, successively, member of the legislature and assistant judge; was one of the founders of Fairhaven in 1783, where he built several factories and founded a newspaper called The Scourge of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truth; elected to Congress in 1797; convicted the next year of libel against President Adams, he was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine; in spite of that, he was re-elected to Congress; took part in several brawls on the floor of the House; settled in Kentucky in 1803; elected to the Kentucky legislature, and to Congress in 1803–11; in 1820 he was appointed United States factor among the Cherokees in Arkansas; elected delegate to Congress from Arkansas Territory, but soon after his election died at Spadra Bluff, AK, on the 1st of August 1822.
