Alfred William Lamb

Alfred William Lamb (March 18, 1824 – April 29, 1888) was a nineteenth-century American lawyer and Democratic politician who represented Missouri in the United States House of Representatives. He was born in Stamford, Delaware County, New York, on March 18, 1824. In 1836, when he was still a boy, he moved with his parents to Ralls County, Missouri, a relocation that placed him on the developing western frontier and set the stage for his later legal and political career in that state.

Lamb pursued his early education in Missouri and attended Marion College in Ely, Missouri, one of the earliest institutions of higher learning in the state. His studies there prepared him for the legal profession, and he subsequently read law in the traditional manner of the period. After completing his legal training, he was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in Hannibal, Missouri, a growing Mississippi River town that would remain his professional and personal base for the rest of his life.

Building on his standing as a practicing attorney and Democrat in northeastern Missouri, Lamb entered national politics in the early 1850s. He was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-third Congress and served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1853, to March 3, 1855. His tenure placed him in Congress during a turbulent pre–Civil War period marked by intensifying sectional disputes, although detailed records of his specific committee assignments and legislative initiatives are limited.

Lamb declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1854, choosing not to seek a second term in Congress. After leaving office at the conclusion of his term in March 1855, he returned to Hannibal and resumed the practice of law. He continued his legal career there for many years, remaining a figure in the civic and professional life of the community as Missouri and the nation moved through the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.

Alfred William Lamb died in Hannibal, Missouri, on April 29, 1888. He was interred in Riverside Cemetery in Hannibal, where his burial marked the close of a life spent largely in the service of his adopted state of Missouri as a lawyer and one-term member of the United States House of Representatives.