Lafayette S. Foster

Who was Lafayette S. Foster?

Lafayette Sabine Foster was a nineteenth-century American politician and lawyer from Connecticut. He served in the United States Senate from 1855 to 1867 and was a judge in the Connecticut Supreme Court from 1870 to 1876.

Born in Franklin, Connecticut, Foster attended common schools as a child and graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1828. He taught school in Providence for some time and studied law back in Norwich, Connecticut. He took charge of an academy in Centerville, Maryland, where he was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1830, then returned to Norwich and was admitted to the federal bar in 1831.

Foster was editor of the Republican, a Whig newspaper out of Connecticut, and served in the Connecticut House of Representatives from 1839 to 1840, 1846 to 1848 and 1854, serving as Speaker of the House for three years. He was the Whig nominee for Governor of Connecticut in 1850 and 1851, but lost both elections. He served as mayor of Norwich, Connecticut, from 1851 to 1852 before being elected as an Oppositionist to the United States Senate in 1854, and reelected in 1860 as a Republican, serving from 1855 to 1867. There, he served as chairman of the Committee on Pensions from 1861 to 1867. His wife, Joanna Boylston Lanman, died on April 11, 1859.