John Bailey (1786 – June 26, 1835) was an American politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts for three terms and part of a fourth from 1824 to 1831.

Biography

Born in Stoughton, Massachusetts (in that part of Stoughton which later became Canton). Bailey graduated from Brown University in 1807. Bailey worked as a tutor and librarian in Providence, Rhode Island from 1807 until 1814.

State House

Bailey was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and served from 1814 to 1817; he served as a clerk in the Department of State in Washington, D.C. from 1817 until 1823.

Bailey was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1816.^[1]

Congress

Bailey presented credentials as a Member-elect to the Eighteenth Congress, but his election was contested on residency requirements. A House resolution on March 18, 1824, declared he was not entitled to the seat.

Upon returning to Canton, Bailey was elected as an Adams-Clay Republican; his subsequent re-elections allowed him to serve the Nineteenth and Twentieth Congresses. During his tenure Bailey chaired the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of State.

Bailey ran as an Anti-Jacksonian in the Twenty-first Congress but was not a candidate for renomination in 1830.

State Senate

He was a member of the Massachusetts State senate from 1831 to 1834, and ran as the unsuccessful Anti-Masonic candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1834.

Death

He died in Dorchester, Massachusetts the following year.