Joseph Ripley Chandler

Joseph Ripley Chandler (August 22, 1792 – July 10, 1880) was a Whig member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Early life and journalism Joseph R. Chandler was born in Kingston, Massachusetts. He was engaged in commercial work in Boston, Massachusetts, and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1815. He founded a young ladies' seminary and worked as editor of the United States Gazette from 1822 to 1847. For a short time, he was an editorial assistant at Graham's Magazine in 1848.

Politics Chandler was a member of the Philadelphia City Council from 1832 to 1848, and a member of the State constitutional convention in 1837. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-first, Thirty-second, and Thirty-third Congresses. He was a leading opponent of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Personal life Chandler's first wife, Mary, died in 1832. On July 3, 1833, he married Anna Maria Holton Jones, a Catholic originally from Baltimore. Raised as a Baptist, Chandler converted to the Catholic Church after the 1852 election. His conversion is cited by Saint Joseph's University professor of history Frank Gerrity as the reason for his failed reelection in 1854.

Prior to joining the Catholic church, Chandler was a freemason and served as grand master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania from 1841 to 1842.

Later life Chandler served as president of the board of directors of Girard College. He became interested in prison reform and was a delegate to the International Prison Congress held at London in 1872. He died in 1880 in Philadelphia, where he was interred in New Cathedral Cemetery.