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:
“Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“Normally, the sciences distance themselves from life and the return to it via a detour.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)