David Bard

David Bard (1744 – March 12, 1815) was a United States representative from Pennsylvania and a Presbyterian clergyman whose career combined religious ministry on the American frontier with long service in the early national Congress. He was born at Carroll’s Delight in Adams County, Pennsylvania, then part of the Province of Pennsylvania, in 1744. Details of his early family life are sparse, but his upbringing in colonial Pennsylvania placed him within the milieu of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlement that strongly influenced the region’s religious and political culture in the mid-eighteenth century.

Bard pursued higher education at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey, an institution closely associated with Presbyterianism and the training of clergy. He graduated in 1773, on the eve of the American Revolution. His education at Princeton would have exposed him to both classical studies and Reformed theology, as well as to the emerging political ideas circulating among colonial elites in the 1770s.

After completing his collegiate studies, Bard turned fully to theology. He studied divinity and was licensed to preach by the Donegal Presbytery in 1777, during the Revolutionary War. In 1779 he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry at Lower Conotheague, a congregation in what was then the western frontier region of Pennsylvania and Maryland. Following his ordination, he served as a missionary in Virginia and west of the Allegheny Mountains, participating in the broader Presbyterian effort to minister to settlers in the trans-Appalachian territories. His work as a missionary placed him among dispersed frontier communities and contributed to the spread of organized religious life in those areas.

By the mid-1780s, Bard had assumed more settled pastoral responsibilities. From 1786 to 1789, he was pastor at Bedford, Pennsylvania, a key community along the frontier routes of the time. After his service in Bedford, he became pastor at Frankstown, which later developed into present-day Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. In these roles he combined preaching, pastoral care, and community leadership, and he remained closely identified with the Presbyterian ministry even as he later entered public office.

Bard’s transition into national politics came in the 1790s, as the new federal government under the Constitution took shape. He was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Fourth and Fifth Congresses, representing Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1795, to March 3, 1799. During this period he aligned with the Jeffersonian opposition to Federalist policies, reflecting the political leanings of many frontier and rural constituents in Pennsylvania who favored limited central government and agrarian interests.

After a brief interval out of Congress, Bard returned to national office in the early nineteenth century. He was elected as a Republican to the Eighth Congress and to the six succeeding Congresses, again representing Pennsylvania. In this extended tenure he served continuously from March 4, 1803, until his death on March 12, 1815. His long service spanned the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and encompassed major national events such as the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812. Throughout these years he remained identified with the Republican (Democratic-Republican) Party, which dominated national politics in this era.

Bard died in office in Alexandria, Pennsylvania, on March 12, 1815, while still a sitting member of the House of Representatives. His death placed him among the early group of United States congressmen who died while serving in the national legislature. He was interred in Sinking Valley Cemetery, near the hamlet of Arch Spring in Pennsylvania, a burial place that reflects his enduring ties to the central Pennsylvania communities where he had lived, preached, and built his political career.