John Benton Sterigere

Who was John Benton Sterigere?

John Benton Sterigere was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

John Benton Sterigere was born in Upper Dublin Township, Pennsylvania, near what is today Ambler, to Peter Sterigere and Ann Elizabeth Sterigere. He worked on a farm and attended school. He was appointed justice of the peace in 1818 and was elected a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, serving from 1821 to 1824. He studied law, was admitted to the bar on November 17, 1829, and commenced practice in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Sterigere was elected to the Twentieth Congress and reelected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-first Congress. He served as the chairman of the United States House Committee on Private Land Claims during the Twenty-first Congress. He was a delegate to the state convention to revise the constitution in 1838, and a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate in 1839 and again from 1843 to 1846. He was a delegate to the 1852 Democratic National Convention. He edited the Register and was appointed by the State assembly as chairman of a commission to improve the town of Norristown. He died in Norristown in 1852. He is interred in Upper Dublin Lutheran Church Cemetery in Ambler, Pennsylvania.