Robert Looney Caruthers

U. S. House of Representatives, Tennessee, 1841-1843
Governor, Tennessee, 1862

Born: July 31, 1800, Smith County, Tennessee.

• Engaged in mercantile pursuits, 1817-1819.
  
• Attended Woodward's Academy, near Columbia, Tennessee, and Greenville College, 1820-1821.
  
• Studied law, was admitted to the Tennessee bar, 1823.
  
• Clerk of the Tennessee State House of Representatives, 1824.
  
• Clerk of the Chancery Court of Smith County, Tennessee, and editor of the Tennessee Republican.
  
• Moved to Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennessee, 1826.
  
• Tennessee State's Attorney, 1827-1832.
  
• Member of the Tennessee State House of Representatives, 1835.
  
• Founder of Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee, 1842, and of its law department, 1847.
  
• Presidential elector on the Whig ticket of Clay and Frelinghuysen, 1844.
  
• Elected from Tennessee as a Whig to the Twenty-seventh U. S. Congress, March 4, 1841 - March 3, 1843.
  
• Appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1852, to fill a vacancy and elected to the position, 1854, which he held until the beginning of the Civil War.
  
• Member of the Peace Convention, 1861, held in Washington, D. C., in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending war.
  
• Elected Governor of Tennessee, 1862, but because of the occupation of the Tennessee by Federal forces never assumed the duties of the office.
  
• At the close of the Civil War became professor of law in Cumberland University, and served in that capacity until his death in 1882.

Died: October 2, 1882, Lebanon, Tennessee.
Buried: Cedar Grove Cemetery, Lebanon, Tennessee.

(Source: U.S. Congress. House. Biographical Directory Of The American Congress 1774-1949, 85th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 607 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 759-2057.)