Robert Witherspoon was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, great-great-grandfather of Robert Witherspoon Hemphill.
Background
Ethnicity:
Father Robert Witherspoon [(1728–1778) was born in County Down, Northern Ireland and settled in the Province of South Carolina. His mother Elizabeth Heathly Witherspoon (1740–1820) was born in South Carolina.
Witherspoon was born near Kingstree, South Carolina.
Career
Witherspoon was elected State treasurer in 1800 and served one term. He was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1792 to 1794 from 1802 to 1804 from 1806 to 1808 from 1816 to 1817.
Witherspoon was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eleventh Congress (March 4, 1809-March 3, 1811). He declined to be a candidate for reelection. He had large planting interests in Sumter County, South Carolina. He opposed the nullification act in 1832.
Politics
Hу was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eleventh Congress. The Democratic-Republican Party, was the political party organized by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1791. It stood in opposition to the Federalist Party, It ruled the USA from 1800 to 1825, during the First Party System. It split due to the 1824 presidential election into two parties: the Democratic Party and the short-lived National Republican Party.