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Courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office
BAYARD, Thomas Francis, Sr. (1828-1898)
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Senate Years of Service: 1869-1885

BAYARD, THOMAS FRANCIS, SR., (son of James Asheton Bayard, Jr., and father of Thomas Francis Bayard, Jr.), a Senator from Delaware; born in Wilmington, Del., October 29, 1828; attended Doctor Hawkes' school in Flushing, N.Y.; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1851 and commenced practice in Wilmington, Del.; appointed United States district attorney for Delaware in 1853, but resigned in 1854; moved to Philadelphia and practiced law; returned to Wilmington in 1858; at the expiration of his father's Senate term in 1869 was elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate; reelected in 1875 and 1881 and served from March 4, 1869, to March 6, 1885, when he resigned to become Secretary of State; served as President pro tempore of the Senate during the Forty-seventh Congress; chairman, Committee on Engrossed Bills (Forty-third through Forty-fifth Congresses), Committee on Finance (Forty-sixth Congress), Committee on Private Land Claims (Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses); appointed a member of the Electoral Commission created by the act of Congress approved on January 29, 1877, to decide the contests in various States in the presidential election of 1876; Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President Grover Cleveland 1885-1889; Ambassador to Great Britain 1893-1897; died in Dedham, Mass., on September 28, 1898; interment in Old Swedes Cemetery, Wilmington, Del.

Hagley Museum and Library
Greenville, DE
Papers: Correspondence in the Lea Mills collection, 1679-1938; John Lorimer Worden papers, 1835-1891, on 1 microfilm reel; and miscellaneous papers in various collections.
Harvard University
Houghton Library
Cambridge, MA
Papers: Correspondence in the Samuel Gray Ward papers, 1837-1900.
Historical Society of Delaware
Wilmington, DE
Papers: 1838-1942. 225 items. Includes scrapbooks, political and personal correspondence, appointments, citations, photographs and a portrait.
Johns Hopkins University
Milton S. Eisenhower Library
Baltimore, MD
Papers: Correspondence and a full-length study in the Gellert Spencer Alleman collection of Edward Spencer papers, 1803-1960.
Knox College
Seymour Library
Galesburg, IL
Papers: 1 letter (July 24, 1888) in Post family papers, 1857-1895.
Library of Congress
Manuscript Division
Washington, DC
Papers: 1780-1899 (bulk 1860-1898). 55 linear feet. Correspondence, letterbooks (1885-1898), financial records, legal papers, notes, reports, memoranda, photographs, speeches, printed matter, and scrapbooks (1847-1892) relating generally to service as U.S. senator, secretary of state, and ambassador to Great Britain. Specifically the papers include material relating to real estate and financial matters, legislation, the Fitz John Porter case, national politics, Samoa, fisheries and seal questions, the Venezuela boundary dispute, Anglo-American and German-American relations, presidential campaigns, the silver question, the Tilden-Hayes controversy, tariff problems, the Sackville-West incident, the Far East conflict between China and Japan over the vassalage of Korea, acquisition of Hawaii, and the Isthmian transit and canal problems. Finding aid.
Maryland Historical Society
Baltimore, MD
Papers: 13 letters relating to various foreign affairs issues in Bayard-Emory correspondence, 1879-1898.
Pierpont Morgan Library
New York, NY
Papers: 1878-1898. 4 items.
Stanford University Libraries
Special Collections
Stanford, CA
Papers: Correspondence in the Elmer E. Robinson collection, 1764-1944; and in the John Franklin Miller papers, 1848-1886.
State University of New York
Poetry and Rare Books
Plattsburgh, NY
Papers: 1895. 1 item. Letter to Howard Pyle.
Syracuse University
George Arents Research Library
Syracuse, NY
Papers: Correspondence in the David Bennett Hill papers, 1885-1910.
University of Delaware Library
Newark, DE
Papers: 1895, 1896, 1869. 3 items. 2 letters and a handwritten autobiographical sketch.
University of Michigan
Bentley Historical Library
Ann Arbor, MI
Papers: Correspondence in the Henry Wade Rogers papers, 1873-1920.
Yale University Libraries
Manuscripts and Archives
New Haven, CT
Papers: Correspondence in the Jeremiah S. Black papers, 1813-1894 (bulk 1842-1884), on 36 reels of microfilm of originals at the Library of Congress.

  • Spencer, Edward. An Outline of the Public Life and Services of Thomas F. Bayard, Senator of the United States from the State of Delaware, 1869-1880. New York: D. Appleton Co., 1880.
  • Tansill, Charles Callan. The Congressional Career of Thomas F. Bayard, 1869-1885. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1946.
  • ___. The Foreign Policy of Thomas F. Bayard, 1885-1897. New York: Fordham University Press, 1940.