John Young Mason (Congressional Biographical Directory)

MASON, John Young, a Representative from Virginia; born near Hicksford (now Emporia), Greensville County, Va., April 18, 1799; was graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1816; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1819 and commenced practice in Hicksford, Va.; member of the State house of delegates 1823-1827; served in the State senate 1827-1831; elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-second, Twenty-third, and Twenty-fourth Congresses and served from March 4, 1831, until his resignation January 11, 1837; chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs (Twenty-fourth Congress); appointed United States district judge for the eastern district of Virginia in 1837; delegate to the State constitutional conventions of 1829 and 1850; appointed Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinet of President John Tyler and served from March 14, 1844, to March 10, 1845, and again in the Cabinet of President James K. Polk from September 9, 1846, to March 7, 1849; Attorney General of the United States from March 11, 1845, to September 9, 1846; resumed the practice of law in Richmond, Va., 1849-1854; appointed United States Minister Plenipotentiary to France on January 22, 1854, and served until his death, in Paris, France, on October 3, 1859; his remains were conveyed to the United States and interred in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va.