Purviance, James

James Purviance, the fourth child of Robert and Frances Purviance, was born on 19 February 1772 in Baltimore, Maryland. He married Elizabeth Young on 3 November 1797 in Baltimore County. They had five children and remained married until her death in 1815.  

Purviance was a successful merchant and active citizen in Baltimore, but his political career there was brief. Purviance won election to Maryland’s House of Delegates in 1802, representing the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican party of Baltimore City, but he lost his bid for reelection in 1803. 

Purviance’s main career was in business. He was a co-owner of the commercial firm Degen, Purviance, & Co., which sold various imported goods from around the world., His company was embroiled in an embezzlement scandal involving senator and militia general Samuel Smith in 1809. Stevens Thomson Mason noted “Cash paid Genl. Smith” on behalf of James Purviance in a March 1801 account book entry. Mason, a United States senator at the time, could have had either business or political dealings with fellow Democratic-Republicans Purviance and Smith. Smith served in the House of Representatives during Mason’s tenure in the Senate. 

Some contemporaries disliked Purviance. One newspaper labeled him a “noted bully,” another paper recounted an aggressive altercation with a publisher who wrote negatively about him and his close friend Smith, and he was challenged to at least one duel. It is worth noting that the Federal Republican, a newspaper that often criticized Purviance in its columns, was affiliated with the Federalist party, while Purviance was a committed and publicly active Democratic-Republican. 

Purviance likely lived on his family’s estate in central Baltimore. He died on 14 June 1836 at the age of sixty-four and is buried in Westminster Burial Ground in Baltimore, in the same plot as his father.

by Amanda Kopf