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Alvin Nelson Hart (February 11, 1804 – August 22, 1874) was an American jurist and politician who served multiple terms in the Michigan Senate and Michigan House of Representatives in the state's early years, and founded the town of Lapeer, Michigan.

Biography

Alvin Hart was born in Cornwall, Connecticut, on February 11, 1804, the youngest son of Revolutionary War veteran Captain Elias Hart and Philomela Burnham. He lived on the family farm until the age of fifteen and was educated in an academy in Sharon, Connecticut, and then attended Amherst College, but did not graduate.

Hart married Charlotte F. Ball in Utica, New York, on July 8, 1828. He lived in Utica for three years and then moved to Michigan. He cut his way through 14 miles (23 km) of wilderness, to the site of present-day Lapeer, Michigan. He built the first log cabin in the area and moved into it on November 11, 1831. His older brother Oliver followed him soon after.

He platted the town of Lapeer, and was appointed sheriff of Lapeer County in 1832. He was a member of the state's constitutional convention in 1835 and that same year was elected as a Democrat to the Michigan House of Representatives. He was elected a supervisor of Lapeer Township in 1842, and served in the position for eleven years. He was elected to the Michigan Senate in 1843, and in 1846, he was elected to a four-year term as a four-year term chief judge of the Lapeer County court. He was elected again to the state senate in 1847 to fill the seat of the deceased Elijah B. Witherbee, and re-elected to a full term in 1848.

Hart founded Lapeer's first newspaper, the Plain Dealer, in 1839. Between 1845 and 1846, Hart invested $10,000 (equivalent to $339,111 in 2023) in building the Lapeer County Courthouse, to compete with another courthouse built by a Whig rival, Enoch J. White. He first offered to lease it to the county for $1 a year, but after the state senate, of which he was a member, voted to allow governments to levy taxes to pay for government buildings, he decided to sell it instead. After voters rejected his offer in 1851, Hart accepted $3,500 for it in 1853. The courthouse is the state's oldest still in use in a county seat.

In 1860, he moved to Lansing, Michigan, where he was a merchant and served as an alderman. He also had interests in real estate, milling, and railroads. He was elected to another term as a representative in 1871.

After a period of poor health, he contracted typhoid pneumonia and died a week later at his home in Lansing, on August 22, 1874. His body was taken from Lansing to Lapeer for his funeral and burial in a special railroad car, accompanied by the mayor and city council of Lansing. At his death, his estate was worth half a million dollars (equivalent to $13,464,706 in 2023).

Family

Hart and his wife Charlotte had five children: Danforth A., B. E., Rodney G., Arthur N., and Mrs. Bell Hamilton. Charlotte Hart died in August 1850.

Notes

1. ^ Bingham 1888, p. 327.
2. Gold 1877, pp. 307–309.
3. ^ Pioneer Society 1880, p. 270.
4. Starr 1926, p. 312.
5. Gold 1877, p. 309.
6. Pioneer Society 1877, p. 219.
7. J. L. Hudson 1937, p. 79.
8. ^ 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved February 29, 2024.
9. Fedynsky 2011, pp. 97–98.
10. ^ H. R. Page 1884, p. 59.
11. Pioneer Society 1877, p. 185.
12. Pioneer Society 1877, p. 185, gives the date as August 21. Bingham 1888, p. 327, as well as Hart's tombstone (Find A Grave 2014) give August 22.
13. Pioneer Society 1880, p. 271.

References

• Bingham, Stephen D. (1888), Early History of Michigan: With Biographies of State Officers, Members of Congress, Judges and Legislators, Lansing: Thorp & Godfrey, retrieved 2018-12-10
• Fedynsky, John (August 26, 2011), Michigan's County Courthouses, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ISBN 978-0-472-03493-2, retrieved 2018-12-11
• Gold, Theodore S. (1877), Historical Records of the Town of Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut, Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, retrieved 2018-12-10
• History of Lapeer County, Michigan, Chicago: H. R. Page, 1884, retrieved 2018-12-10
• "Memorial of the Late Alvin N. Hart", Michigan Historical Collections, vol. 2, Lansing: Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, pp. 270–272, 1880, retrieved 2018-12-10
• Michigan Historical Collections, vol. 1, Lansing: Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, 1877, retrieved 2018-12-10
• Michigan Manual (1877–78 ed.), Lansing: W. S. George & Co., 1877, retrieved 2018-12-10
• Michigan Pioneers: The First One Hundred Years of Statehood, Detroit: J. L. Hudson, 1937, retrieved 2018-12-11
• Starr, Edward C. (1926), A History of Cornwall, Connecticut, a Typical New England Town, New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, retrieved 2018-12-10
• "Tombstone of Alvin N. Hart", Find A Grave, October 11, 2014, retrieved 2018-12-10

• 1804 births
• 1874 deaths
• Democratic Party members of the Michigan House of Representatives
• Democratic Party Michigan state senators
• People from Cornwall, Connecticut
• People from Lapeer, Michigan
• 19th-century members of the Michigan Legislature