Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/29

 JAMES ALBERT GARY

, of Maryland, Postmaster-General, was born in Uncasville, Conn., of Puritan ancestry; was educated at Rockhill Institute, Maryland, and Allegheny College, Pennsylvania; removed with his parents from the place of his birth to Maryland in 1840; became a partner with his father in the Alberton Cotton Mills, located at Alberton, in 1861; his father dying in 1870 he succeeded to the head of the business and has conducted it since; was nominated as a Whig for the State senate in 1858, and was defeated; was one of the three delegates from his county to the Union convention in 1861 at the Maryland Institute, and cast his entire influence for the Union cause; was a delegate to the national Republican convention at Philadelphia in 1872; was nominated by the Republicans for Congress that year, and was defeated; was a delegate to the national Republican conventions of 1876, 1880, 1884, 1892, and 1896: is vice-president of the Citizens' National Bank of Baltimore, of the Consolidated Gas Company of Baltimore, a director in the American Fire Insurance Company, in the Baltimore Trust and Guarantee Company, in the Savings Bank of Baltimore, and is connected with various other corporations and enterprises; was confirmed as Postmaster-General March 5, 1897. He resigned his position as Postmaster-General in 1898, owing to ill health, which the arduous duties of his office appeared to aggravate.