ORVILLE HITCHCOCK PLATT
PLATT, ORVILLE HITCHCOCK, lawyer, statesman, late United States senator from Connecticut, was born at Washington, Connecticut, July 19, 1827, son of Daniel G. and Almira (Hitchcock) Piatt. He died at the place of his birth, April 21, 1905.
His first American ancestor, Richard Piatt, was of English birth and parentage, and one of the original settlers of the colony of New Haven, in 1638. His father, as well as his grandfather, John Piatt, was a farmer, and he himself worked on the farm until he was twenty years of age. He received his education, meanwhile, in the public schools and at the celebrated Gunn academy, located in the village of Washington.
From the farm and the academy he passed to the study of law; first, in the office of Gideon H. Hollister, of Litchfield, the Connecticut historian; and subsequently at Towanda, Pennsylvania, with Honorable Ulysses Mercer, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. He was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1849, and to that of Connecticut, and practised law at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for two years immediately following his admission. He then settled in Meriden, Connecticut, continued the practice of law there, and soon entered political life.
In 1855-56, he was clerk of the Connecticut senate; in 1857 he was elected secretary of state for Connecticut; in 1861-62, he was a member of the state senate; and, in 1864, and again, in 1869, he served as a member of the Connecticut house of representatives, of which he was speaker during his last term. Throughout his legislative career he was an intense Republican, and while state senator he had removed from the state house the portraits of two so-called "Copperhead" governors, which, however, were afterward returned. In 1877, he was judge of probate for New Haven county, and was subsequently appointed state's attorney for the same county, relinquishing that office, in 1879, when he was elected to the United States senate as the successor of Honorable William H. Barnum, Democrat.
