David A. Ogden

David Aaron Ogden (January 10, 1770 – June 9, 1829) was a U.S. Representative from New York, a lawyer, land developer, and a member of the prominent Ogden family. Born into a well-established New York family with deep colonial roots and extensive commercial and legal connections, he was part of a network of Ogdens who were influential in law, politics, and business in the early United States. His family background and connections helped shape his later career in law, land speculation, and public service.

Ogden received a formal education appropriate to a young man of his social standing in late eighteenth-century New York and pursued the study of law. After reading law in the customary manner of the period, he was admitted to the bar and commenced practice. His legal training and family ties brought him into contact with major landholding and commercial interests in New York and neighboring regions, positioning him to play a role in the development of frontier lands and in the legal affairs of prominent families and corporations.

Building on his legal practice, Ogden became involved in land development and speculation, an important field in the rapidly expanding United States. He was associated with significant land transactions and development projects, particularly in northern New York, and his papers on land development are preserved in the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. These records reflect his participation in the complex legal and financial arrangements that accompanied the opening of new territories to settlement and commerce in the early nineteenth century.

As a member of the Federalist Party representing New York, Ogden was elected to the United States House of Representatives and served one term in Congress. His service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history, when debates over federal power, economic policy, and relations with foreign powers were central to national politics. During his tenure, he contributed to the legislative process, participating in the democratic governance of the young republic and representing the interests of his New York constituents within the Federalist framework of strong national institutions and commercial development.

Ogden married and became the patriarch of a large family whose members continued the Ogden tradition of public and professional engagement. His children included Isaac Edwards Ogden (1798–), who married Euphrosine Mericult, Letitia Hanna, and Elizabeth Chamberlain; Sarah Ogden (1799–1844), who married Charles Russell Codman (1784–1852); William Ogden (1801–1838), who married Harriet Seton Ogden (1806–1884) in 1832; Wallace Ogden (1803–1828); Mary E. Ogden (1805–1853), who married Herman LeRoy Newbold (d. 1854); Samuel Cornell Ogden (1806–1862), who married his first cousin Sarah F. Waddington (1810–1903) in 1843; Catharine H. Ogden (1808–1874), who married her first cousin Samuel Ogden (1803–1879); Susan W. Ogden (1810–1892), who married William Roebuck; Rebecca E. Ogden (1811–1886), who married George B. Ogden; Duncan Campbell Ogden (1813–1859), who married Miriam Gratz Meredith and Elizabeth Cox and later served as a member of the First Texas Legislature; and David A. Ogden, Jr. (1815–), who married Louisa Lanfear. Through these descendants, the Ogden family remained intertwined with legal, political, and commercial life in the United States well into the nineteenth century.

In his later years, Ogden continued his legal and land-related activities while maintaining the social and familial networks that had characterized his career. He died in Montreal in Lower Canada (in modern-day Quebec) on June 9, 1829. His remains were returned to New York and interred in Brookside Cemetery in Waddington, New York, a community closely associated with the land interests and regional development efforts in which he had been involved. His life and career, documented in part through his surviving papers and his entry in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, reflect the intertwined worlds of law, land, and politics in the early national period.