Matthias Jacob Bovee (July 24, 1793 – September 12, 1872) was an American farmer, merchant, local official, and politician who served one term as a U.S. Representative from New York from 1835 to 1837. He was born in Amsterdam, Montgomery County, New York, where he attended a rural school during his youth. The death of his father in 1807 forced him at a young age to assume greater responsibility for his family’s support. He alternated between teaching school in the winter months and working the family farm in the summer, an early pattern of labor that combined education and agriculture and shaped his later career. He married Elizabeth Bovee, the daughter of Isaac Bovee, thereby maintaining close ties within the local Dutch-American community of the Mohawk Valley.
Bovee’s early working life was rooted in both education and commerce. He began as a schoolteacher and then expanded into mercantile pursuits, including interests associated with railroads and banks as those sectors developed in New York in the early nineteenth century. Alongside his business activities, he became increasingly active in local government. In 1815 he served as chairman of the town of Amsterdam, an office that placed him at the center of town administration during a period of growth and change. He also served as a member of the Montgomery County board of supervisors, participating in county-level governance and oversight. During the 1820s he was a member of the New York militia, reflecting the common practice of civic-minded men of his generation to combine public service with military readiness.
By the mid-1820s Bovee had moved into state-level politics. He was elected a member of the New York State Assembly in 1826, representing his district in Albany at a time when the state was undergoing rapid economic expansion and political realignment in the wake of the Erie Canal’s completion and the rise of Jacksonian democracy. He continued to play a prominent role in local affairs as well, serving as a trustee of the village of Amsterdam in 1831. These positions, together with his experience in town and county offices and his mercantile and agricultural background, provided the foundation for his later election to national office.
Elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-fourth Congress, Bovee represented New York’s fifteenth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1835, to March 3, 1837. As a member of the Jackson Party representing New York, he contributed to the legislative process during his single term in office. His service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history, marked by debates over banking policy, internal improvements, and the evolving role of the federal government under President Andrew Jackson. In this context, Bovee participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of his constituents from the Mohawk Valley region, aligning with the broader Jacksonian movement that emphasized expanded political participation and suspicion of concentrated financial power.
After the conclusion of his congressional term, Bovee returned to Amsterdam and resumed his mercantile pursuits. He continued to be identified with both commerce and agriculture, reflecting the mixed economic character of upstate New York in the antebellum period. His post-congressional years in New York were spent outside of elective national office, but he remained engaged in the economic life of his community, drawing on his experience in business, farming, and public service.
In June 1843, Bovee left New York and moved west to Milwaukee in the Wisconsin Territory, part of the broader mid-nineteenth-century migration from the eastern states to the developing Midwest. Two months later he settled near Eagle in what became Waukesha County, Wisconsin. There he engaged primarily in agricultural pursuits, continuing the farming work that had marked his youth in New York. In his new community he again took on public responsibilities, serving as a justice of the peace for ten years, an office that involved local judicial and administrative duties and underscored his longstanding reputation as a trusted local official.
Matthias Jacob Bovee died in Eagle, Wisconsin, on September 12, 1872, at the age of 79 years and 50 days. He was interred at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Eagle, Wisconsin. His family connections extended into national politics beyond his own career: his sister Polly (Mary) was the wife of Congressman Benedict Arnold, further linking the Bovee family to the political life of the early United States.
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