Life
He was the first child of Col. Nathaniel Rochester (1752–1831), founder of the City of Rochester, New York, and Sophia (Beatty) Rochester (1768–1845). He attended the public schools and graduated from Charlotte Hall Military Academy. In 1812, he married his first wife Harriet Irwin (d. 1815), and their son was Nathaniel Montgomery Rochester (1813–1823).
During the War of 1812, Rochester was an aide-de-camp to Gen. George McClure. After the war, he studied law with his uncle Judge Adam Beatty and with Henry Clay, was admitted to the bar, and began practice in Bath, New York. Later, he removed to Angelica, New York. On January 31, 1816, he married his second wife Amanda Hopkins (d. 1831), and their children were James Hervey Rochester (1819–1860), Harriet Louisa (Rochester) Bull (1821–1854), Sophia Elizabeth Rochester (1823–1824), William Beatty Rochester (1826–1909) and Nathaniel Elie Rochester (1829–1833).
Rochester was a member of the New York State Assembly (Allegany and Steuben Co.) in 1816-17 and 1818. Rochester was a presidential elector in 1820, voting for James Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins.
Rochester was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the 17th, and re-elected as a Crawford Democratic-Republican to the 18th United States Congress, holding office from December 3, 1821, to April 21, 1823 when he resigned upon his appointment as Judge of the Eight Circuit Court. He resigned from the bench to run on the Bucktails ticket for Governor of New York in 1826, but was narrowly defeated by DeWitt Clinton.
He was Secretary to the Special Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia in 1826, and Chargé d'affaires to Central America in 1827-28. In 1828, he was appointed by Nicholas Biddle as President of the branch of the Second Bank of the United States at Buffalo, New York, remaining there until 1836. On April 9, 1832, he married his third wife Eliza (Hatch) Powers (1800–1885, widow of Gershom Powers), and their children were Eliza Hatch Rochester (1833–1868) and George William Rochester (1835–1837).
He later served as President of the Bank of Pensacola, Florida and a director of the Alabama and Florida Railroad. Rochester died in the wreck of the steamer Pulaski off the coast of North Carolina on June 14, 1838.
Mayor Thomas H. Rochester was his brother.
Read more about this topic: William B. Rochester
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.”
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“A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 14:30.
“The arbitrary division of one’s life into weeks and days and hours seemed, on the whole, useless. There was but one day for the men, and that was pay day, and one for the women, and that was rent day. As for the children, every day was theirs, just as it should be in every corner of the world.”
—Alice Caldwell Rice (1870–1942)