Francis Granger (1792–1868), attorney and public official, was born in Suffield, Connecticut, the son of Gideon Granger, who served as postmaster general under both TJ and James Madison. The younger Granger graduated from Yale College (later Yale University) in 1811. Admitted to the bar in 1816, he joined his father in Canandaigua, New York, and practiced law. Granger was elected to the New York state assembly as a supporter of DeWitt Clinton and held the seat for five sessions, 1826–28, 1830, and 1832. He soon achieved prominence when he led the legislature’s committee to investigate the alleged abduction and murder by a group of Freemasons of William Morgan, a critic of that organization. As a result, Granger became the unsuccessful National Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of New York in 1828 when the party failed to form a joint ticket with the Anti-Masons. The same two parties did join in nominating him for the governorship in 1830 and 1832, but he lost both races. Granger sat in the United States House of Representatives as an Anti-Jacksonian, 1835–37, and as a Whig, 1839–41. He was the unsuccessful Whig and Anti-Masonic candidate for vice president in 1837, an election decided in the United States Senate. Granger resigned his congressional seat in March 1841 when he was appointed postmaster general by President William Henry Harrison, but he gave up the post later that year along with other cabinet opponents of John Tyler and returned to the House to fill a vacancy, 1841–43. Granger chaired an 1850 state Whig convention but, as he had softened his formerly strong antislavery stance in support of the Compromise of 1850, he found himself in the minority there and led a small group of defectors nicknamed the “Silver Grays,” a reference to his notable white hair. He advocated compromise at an 1861 conference in Washington, D.C., that sought to avert civil war. In 1860 Granger owned real estate valued at $100,000 and personal property worth $200,000. He died in Canandaigua (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Biog. Dir. Cong. description begins Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–Present, online resource, Office of the Clerk, United States House of Representatives description ends ; Dexter, Yale Biographies description begins Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, 1885–1912, 6 vols. description ends , 6:389–91; Franklin B. Hough, The New-York Civil List [1858], 204–7, 209, 212; Clay, Papers description begins James F. Hopkins and others, eds., The Papers of Henry Clay, 1959–92, 11 vols. description ends ; William H. Seward and Frederick W. Seward, Autobiography of William H. Seward [1877], esp. 171–2; Harriet A. Weed, ed., Autobiography of Thurlow Weed [1883], esp. 391–2; DNA: RG 29, CS, N.Y., Canandaigua, 1860; New York Herald, 1 Sept. 1868).