#20 Seabury Ford

Seabury Ford

Born: October 15, 1801

Died: May 8, 1855

Political Party: Whig

Term of Office: January 22, 1849 - December 12, 1850

Buried: Welton Cemetery Burton, Ohio

No. 45 of 58

  

   Seabury Ford was born in Connecticut. His family moved to Burton, Ohio when he was still very young. Ford's family were among the earliest settlers in Connecticut, arriving in 1637 and going back 6 generations. In 1821, Ford would return to the state of his birth to attend Yale University. After his graduation in 1825 he returned home to Ohio where he studied law with his uncle Peter Hitchcock, who served 28 years in the Ohio Supreme Court, 21 of them as Chief Justice of Ohio.

    After admittance to the Ohio bar in 1827, Ford started practicing law in his hometown of Burton. The following year he got married to a cousin of his, Harriet Cook. The couple went on to have 5 sons.

   Ford joined the state militia, eventually earning the rank of Major General. This led to his entering Whig party politics when he was elected to the Ohio State House of Representatives in 1835. He would serve 3, 2 year terms here, one as Speaker of the Ohio House. Ford was then elected to the Ohio Senate, where he served from 1841 to 1847.

   In 1848, Ford was chosen to be the Whig parties candidate for Governor of Ohio. He won the closest election in Ohio's history. He won by about 311 votes of about 300,000. The election had to be decided by the state legislature. Which delayed his inauguration by 6 weeks.

   Governor Ford took office in the aftermath of the Mexican War and of great national debate over the expansion of slavery. Little was accomplished due to constant deadlock in the state legislature. Ford would repeal the Black Laws of 1807. Slavery was illegal in Ohio. However these black laws required African Americans to have to prove that they weren't runaway slaves. They also restricted African American's rights to marry white people and own guns, among other things. So Ford's greatest accomplishment as Governor was the repeal of these laws. During his administration, the Ohio legislature voted to renew the state's Constitution, which led to the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1851. Ford was the last Whig to be Ohio's Governor.

    Ford retired from politics after his one term was over. Sadly, he suffered a stroke only a week after returning home, from which he never fully recovered. He died in 1855 at the age of 53.

   I visited the gravesite of Governor Ford over Memorial Day weekend 2018. My wife and I attended an Indians game and hit a bunch of sites in the Cleveland area the next day.

Governor Ford and I