EASTON, MARYLAND — Robert Henry Goldsborough was born Jan. 4, 1779, at Myrtle Grove, near Easton, and died there Oct. 5, 1836, while serving in the United States Senate. Monday marked 190 years since his death. The Maryland State Archives and the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress keep the record of the life.

He was the son of Robert and Mary (Trippe) Goldsborough. He was educated by private tutors and graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis, then farmed and practiced law. He married Henrietta Maria Nichols on Jan. 16, 1800; the archives list ten children.

Talbot County sent him to the House of Delegates in 1804. In the War of 1812 he commanded a troop of horsemen in the Maryland militia, and the archives record his service as a captain in May 1813 and his rank of major by February 1814. He was then elected to the U.S. Senate as a Federalist, filling a seat the legislature had left empty when it failed to elect anyone for the term beginning March 4, 1813. He served from May 21, 1813, to March 3, 1819, and in the Fifteenth Congress chaired the Committee on Claims and the Committee on the District of Columbia.

Back in Talbot he returned to farming and was instrumental in establishing the Easton Gazette in 1817. He sat again in the House of Delegates in 1825 and served on the Board of Public Works of the Eastern Shore from 1825 to 1828. In January 1835 he returned to the Senate as an Anti-Jacksonian, later a Whig, to fill the vacancy left when Ezekiel F. Chambers resigned. He chaired the Committee on Commerce in the Twenty-fourth Congress and held the seat until his death.

He was buried at Ashby, the family home in Talbot County.

Born at Myrtle Grove and dead at Myrtle Grove at 57, he has now been gone 190 years.