sentences:  Later that year, voters elected Ayer as a Republican to the Forty-first Congress.He defeated Conservative Joseph Eggleton Segar (whom the U.S. Congress had refused to seat the previous two sessions and again unsuccessfully claimed a seat in this Congress) as well as Independents Daniel M. Norton (an African American aligned with the Readjuster Party who also had served in that constitutional convention and would serve in the Virginia Senate) and George W. Lewis.Ayer served from January 31, 1870, until March 3, 1871.