Ezra Bartlett French was born on September 23, 1810, in Landaff, New Hampshire, to John French. His father was a physician. He grew up and attended school in Landaff, and he was admitted to the New Hampshire bar around 1833. He moved to Maine in the 1830s. He married a woman named Bethiah, and they had two children, both of whom died in infancy.

 

He supported the Democratic Party. He served in Maine’s state legislature from 1838 until 1840 and in the state senate from 1842 until 1845. He then served as Maine’s secretary of state from 1845 until 1850. By 1850, he was living in Damariscotta, Maine, and he owned $1,800 of real estate. A decade later, he owned $2,000 of real estate and $2,000 of personal property.

 

He helped organize Maine’s Republican Party in the 1850s, and he served in Congress from 1859 until 1861. President Abraham Lincoln appointed him Second Auditor of the Treasury in August 1861, and he held the position for the next twenty years. By 1870, he owned $6,000 of personal property. He died in Washington, D.C., on April 24, 1880.

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