George Logan

George Logan (September 9, 1753April 9, 1821) was an American physician, farmer, legislator and politician from Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. He served in the Pennsylvania state legislature and represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate.

Early life, education, and marriage
George Logan was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 9, 1753. He was the grandson of William Penn's secretary James Logan. As a child, he was sent to England for schooling, and later his Loyalist family again sent him overseas when the American Revolution broke out, this time to get medical training. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1779. He returned to the United States in 1780, and in 1781 he married Deborah Norris, who went on to become a noted historian and diarist. Two years later they moved into Stenton, a mansion built in the Germantown area of Philadelphia by James Logan that is now open to the public. Partly due to the demands of restoring and maintaining Stenton, Logan gave up his career as a physician and became a gentleman farmer and politician. The Logans had three sons, Albanus (1783–1854), Gustavus George (1786–1800), and Algernon Sydney (1791–1835). At Stenton, the couple entertained a wide circle of politicians, artists, writers, and businesspeople, counting among their friends Thomas Jefferson and the painter Charles Willson Peale.

Career
Despite his Loyalist background, Logan was able to take part in the political life of the new United States. In 1785 he was elected to the Pennsylvania legislature, serving for four years; and he was elected for another term in the late 1790s.

In 1790, he was disowned by the Society of Friends (Quakers) for having joined a militia, an activity wholly antithetical to the Quakers' pacifist views. A Jeffersonian Republican, in 1793 he helped to found the Democratic-Republican Societies. An accomplished farmer, he was also a founder of the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Agriculture. In 1798, he went to Paris to negotiate peace with the French to settle the Quasi-War. On his return, he found he had been denounced by the anti-Jeffersonian Federalists, who had passed a statute informally known as the "Logan Act", which made it a crime for an individual citizen to interfere in a dispute between the United States and a foreign country. In 1800, the year Jefferson was elected president, Logan was elected to the U.S. Senate for a six-year term.

Logan's reputation was decidedly mixed. With reference to his political activities, he was called at various times a "busybody" and a "great fool", but Jefferson considered him “the best farmer in Pennsylvania, both in theory and practice.”

Logan died in 1821, and not long afterwards Deborah Logan wrote an account of his life under the title Memoir of Dr. George Logan of Stenton, including excerpts from letters. It was published in 1899.

See also

Stenton (mansion)

References

Further reading
Logan, Deborah Norris. Memoir of Dr. George Logan of Stenton. Frances A. Logan, ed. Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1899. (Modern reprint by Kessinger Publishing, .)
Tolles, Frederick B. George Logan of Philadelphia. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953.
Tolles, Frederick B. "Unofficial Ambassador: George Logan's Mission to France, 1798." William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 7 (1950): pp. 1–25.

External links

Short article and portrait at "Discovering Lewis & Clark"

Category:1753 births
Category:1821 deaths
Category:Members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Category:United States senators from Pennsylvania
Category:American diplomats
Category:Physicians from Pennsylvania
Category:Farmers from Pennsylvania
Category:Pennsylvania Democratic-Republicans
Category:Democratic-Republican Party United States senators
Category:Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Category:People disowned by the Quakers
Category:Physician-politicians