Roswell Hart

Roswell Hart (August 4, 1824 – April 20, 1883) was a United States Representative from New York during the Reconstruction era. He was born in Rochester, New York, where he completed his preparatory studies in the local schools of the growing canal and commercial center. Showing early academic promise, he pursued higher education at Yale College, then one of the leading institutions in the country, and was graduated in 1843. While at Yale he was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones, an affiliation that placed him among a network of prominent political, legal, and business figures of the mid-nineteenth century.

Following his graduation from Yale, Hart returned to New York to prepare for a career in the law. He studied law in the customary manner of the period, through apprenticeship and independent reading, and was admitted to the bar in 1847. Although qualified to practice, he did not confine himself exclusively to legal work. Instead, he engaged in commercial pursuits in and around Rochester, participating in the economic life of a city that was rapidly expanding as a regional hub for trade and transportation in upstate New York. His combined legal training and business experience helped establish his standing in the community and laid the groundwork for later public service.

Hart’s involvement in politics developed alongside the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s and 1860s, as debates over slavery, the Union, and economic development reshaped national alignments. Identifying with the Republican program of preserving the Union and promoting internal improvements, he became active in party affairs in New York. By the time of the Civil War’s conclusion, he was sufficiently prominent within Republican circles to secure a nomination for Congress from his home district.

Hart was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-ninth Congress and served a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1865, to March 4, 1867. His service coincided with the immediate post–Civil War period, when Congress confronted the challenges of Reconstruction, the reintegration of the former Confederate states, and the legal status of formerly enslaved people. Although not among the most nationally visible figures of the era, he participated in the legislative work of a Congress that enacted significant measures affecting the rebuilding of the South and the future direction of federal policy. In 1866 he was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Fortieth Congress, ending his brief tenure in national elective office.

After leaving Congress, Hart continued his public career in the federal civil service. He was appointed superintendent of the Railway Mail Service for the States of New York and Pennsylvania, a position he held from 1869 to 1876. In this capacity he oversaw a key component of the rapidly modernizing postal system, as the Railway Mail Service expanded to sort and transport mail on moving trains, greatly accelerating communication across the northeastern United States. His work contributed to the efficiency and reliability of mail delivery in two of the nation’s most populous and commercially important states during a period of significant growth in rail infrastructure and interstate commerce.

In his later years, Hart remained associated with Rochester, where he had been born and where he maintained his principal ties. He lived there until his death on April 20, 1883. Roswell Hart was interred in Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, a burial ground noted for being the final resting place of many of the city’s leading nineteenth-century citizens, reflecting his status as a prominent local figure who had also served on the national stage.