Whereas: Stories from the People’s House

Will the Real Thomas Forrest Please Stand Up

Since 1859, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress has compiled life and career information for every lawmaker who has ever served on Capitol Hill. Included among the more than 11,000 congressional biographies in the Directory is a brief entry for Representative Thomas Forrest of Pennsylvania who served in the House in the 16th and 17th Congresses (1819–1823).

On the surface, Forrest’s biography is rather conventional. It lists where he was born, where he studied as a young man, his military experience, his career before entering the House, and his service dates in Congress.

But left unsaid in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress are details of Forrest’s life that were anything but conventional.

Although we do not know the exact day Thomas Forrest was born, we know that he was born in Philadelphia in 1747, meaning that by the time of his first term in Congress, he was 72 years old—making him tied for oldest lawmaker in the House that session. Forrest had lived an entire life before entering politics—but given what he did with his time on Earth, it is perhaps more accurate to say he had lived entire lives.

Act One: The Disappointment

Little is known about Thomas Forrest’s early years. His parents were William and Sarah Forrest, and as a young man he attended local community-funded schools. In 1770, he married a woman named Ann Whitpaine and had at least two children.

But around that time, Thomas Forrest wasn’t just Thomas Forrest. He was also, apparently, known by the pseudonym Andrew Barton. Writing as Barton, Forrest authored The Disappointment, or the Force of Credulity, what is believed to be the first comedic operetta created by an American. It was also the first work to include the patriotic tune Yankee Doodle. In the author’s note, Barton stated that he wrote the “local piece . . . originally wrote for my own, and the amusement of a few particular friends.” The operetta gained enough attention that it was set to be performed in Philadelphia in 1767 but was canceled at the last minute due to its biting satire. The jokes reportedly made fun of identifiable, prominent Philadelphians.

More than two centuries later, The Disappointment experienced a revival of sorts when it was resurrected for the bicentennial celebration of American independence in 1976. While some scholars have questioned if the Thomas Forrest who served in the House was the same Thomas Forrest who wrote The Disappointment, as of today, there is no other candidate who can claim authorship.

In the late 1760s, Forrest’s hijinks extended beyond the page. According to the Annals of Philadelphia—a compendium of “authentic, curious, and highly interesting” stories published by John F. Watson in 1830—around 1768, Forrest played an involved practical joke on a local tailor. While being fitted for a suit, 21-year-old Thomas—described by the Annals as “a youth of much frolic and fun, always well disposed to give time and application to forward a joke”—listened as the tailor mused about one day finding treasure left behind by pirates. After returning home, Forrest concocted a deathbed letter from a fictitious pirate who before being executed had buried loot at Cooper’s Point in New Jersey. Forrest pretended to find this phony letter within his father’s papers and presented it to the superstitious tailor. When the tailor brought in an acquaintance to conjure the spirit of Forrest’s pirate, Forrest went to elaborate lengths to stage a seance where a person dressed as a ghost was lowered from the ceiling. As the ruse continued, Forrest arranged for a treasure hunt to retrieve the pirate’s stash in New Jersey where Forrest had prepared more theatrics. Not only did Forrest bury a fake pot of treasure he hired two men to act as specters to scare the group and arranged for a stunt that involved cats and fireworks. After the group dug up Forrest’s decoy treasure chest, Forrest dropped it into the ocean and staged it as an accident. Thus, the “treasure” was found and then lost again. The tailor went as far as accusing Forrest of keeping the treasure for himself and sued the future Congressman for part of the profit, but the case was eventually dropped.

Act Two: Revolutionary

Thomas Forrest’s reputation as a jokester seems to have followed him into the 1770s and onto the frontlines of America’s war for independence.

Forrest joined the Continental Army in 1775 and was assigned to a Pennsylvania artillery division. He achieved the rank of captain by 1776 and was with General George Washington when the Army struck Trenton, New Jersey, leading two cannon units that became key to the Hessians’ defeat. Because of his leadership, the Army promoted Forrest to major in 1777 and to lieutenant colonel in 1778. In 1779, Brigadier General Henry Knox, wrote to Washington recommending that Forrest’s service be recognized. “Major Forrest is next in rank—Your Excellency knows his zeal and activity—I think he is a proper subject for promotion,” Knox observed. Although Washington seemed supportive of Knox’s endorsement, Army rules meant the promotion went to an older colleague. Forrest left the Army in 1781 and was afterwards known to his family and friends as Colonel Forrest.

Even as Forrest worked to secure America’s freedom, he seems to have set aside time for pranks. The winter of 1777 proved to be a harrowing time for Forrest and the rest of Washington’s Army stationed at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Continental forces were short on food and clothing, and in need of troops and personnel. One night, as new recruits arrived from New Jersey, someone posted signs about smallpox infections outside the tents of the recently arrived soldiers. When the men awoke the next day, they promptly left camp. Blame for the prank seems to have been directed at Forrest, who was reportedly later reprimanded by Washington.

Act Three: Capitol Hill

After leaving the military in 1781, Forrest held a steady job as a stockbroker in Philadelphia with an office on Market Street. Although details about his life over the next few decades is fleeting, newspapers and print accounts provide some information on the period between the war and his election to Congress.

By at least the early 1800s, Forrest had become involved in politics. In 1806, newspapers stated that Forrest served as chairman of the Germantown, Pennsylvania, Democratic Republicans. A year later, Forrest was appointed to a delegation from Philadelphia to correspond with other citizens in the United States. And in 1812, Forrest won election as a constable in Philadelphia.

In 1816, Forrest stood for election to the 15th Congress (1817–1819) but lost. Two years later, he ran again and won a seat in the 16th Congress (1819–1821). In his first term, Forrest, who served as a Federalist, was appointed chairman of the House Agriculture Committee—perhaps a curious assignment for a lawmaker who once worked in the financial sector from Philadelphia. But as chairman, Forrest used his economic experience to consider proposed increases to America’s import duties, producing an 11-page report in early February 1821 in which he called the new tariff schedule “one of the most important that has ever been offered to consideration to Congress.” Forrest ultimately concluded that higher duties were “incompatible with the interests of agriculture and of the community in general, and ought not to be adopted.”

Forrest lost re-election in 1820, but later won a special election in October 1822 to the 17th Congress (1821–1823) following the resignation of Representative William Milnor. Forrest was defeated for re-election to the 18th Congress (1823–1825).

Despite his history of mirth making, there are no recorded complaints about any pranks at the hands of Representative Forrest on Capitol Hill. In the House, Forrest presented himself in the role of elder statesman. Part of what we know about Forrest as a lawmaker comes from then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. In Adams’s diary from November 1820, he described a visit from Forrest:

Col. Thomas Forrest, a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania was here this morning; he retains by courtesy his title of colonel which he held during our Revolutionary War, though he is now a Quaker in full communion, wearing the drab-colored suit of broadcloth raiment, and the broad-brimmed hat, never taken off for salutation or civility, and thou and theeing all with whom he converses[.] The humorous contrast in his character is the luxuriant delight with which he glories in his military services, and the indications constantly oozing out from his discourse that he considers personal courage the first of human virtues, united with all the ostensible formalities of Quakerism. He entertained me this day with a long account of the share he had in the passage of the Delaware and capture of the Hessians at Trenton 25th–26th December, 1776. . . . The incidents of those two days have been so rivetted in his memory by its continual recurrence to them through a period of forty-four years, that they are fresh in his mind as if they had happened yesterday. He remembers every person who was there; every word that was said; every look that was cast by General Washington; and every recollection comes with a perfume of fragrance to his soul. This is the most exquisite of human enjoyments—the memory by which one’s own conduct is linked with scenes of deep danger and distress issuing in resplendent glory. The colonel is seventy years of age or more, but has yet much activity and apparent vigor of constitution.

In the House, Representative Forrest was adamantly opposed to the expansion of slavery. On February 29, 1820, during debate over the bill to admit Missouri to the Union, Forrest held the floor as he delivered an impassioned plea not to permit slavery in the vast territory west of the Mississippi River; his speech covered five and half columns of text when it was printed in the Annals of Congress.

Forrest evoked his service in the Revolution, the Framers’ intent in the Constitution, and his faith as a Quaker. When a Virginia lawmaker expressed his opinion that if Congress restricted slavery it would constitute “the darkest day” in American history, Forrest disagreed. “No; the morning of the 26th day of December 1776 . . . was the darkest time our country ever saw.” Forrest was with Washington at the Battle of Trenton, and he said he would forever remember what Washington said, “That the darkest time of night was just before day.” Forrest eulogized the soldiers he fought with who died at Trenton whose deaths he “regretted as premature and unfortunate, snatched, as I then thought, from a participation in the blessings of an happy independence, in the full enjoyment of every civil and religious liberty.” But 44 years later, now that he was a Member of Congress debating the spread of slavery, Forrest said, “I have occasion to rejoice; yes, rejoice overmuch, that they were not, like me, permitted to live to see posterity outgrow the remembrance of the patriotic virtues of their fathers, by an act for the extension of slavery.” Despite Forrest’s opposition, the Missouri Compromise became law a week later in early March 1820.

Forrest died in 1825—exactly 50 years after he had enlisted in the Continental Army—at his home near Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was survived by at least one daughter, her husband Dr. Thomas Benton, and their son, Thomas Forrest Benton. In his obituary, the Norristown Herald wrote simply that Forrest had been “a distinguished Revolutionary officer, and not long since a member of Congress.” Left unsaid, however, was any mention of Forrest’s life of invention and reinvention. He had satirized power and wealth in Philadelphia at a time when America was challenging the power and wealth of England. He had been a soldier at a time when America was at war for its freedom; a lawmaker at a time when America was fully in charge of its own fate; and an anti-slavery proponent at a perilous time in the nation’s history.

Sources: Annals of Congress, House, 16th Cong., 1st sess. (29 February 1820): 1559–1564; House Committee on Agriculture, Objections to an Increase of Duties on Imports, 16th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Rept. 613 (1821); Thomas Forrest to George Washington, 10 May 1779, in Founders Online, National Archives and Records Administration, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0363; Henry Knox to George Washington, 13 May 1779, in Founders Online, National Archives and Records Administration, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0408; George Washington to Major Thomas Forrest, 16 May 1779, in Founders Online, National Archives and Records Administration, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0446; George Washington to the Board of War, 18 May 1779, in Founders Online, National Archives and Records Administration, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-20-02-0461; Thomas Forrest to George Washington, 2 April 1781, in Founders Online, National Archives and Records Administration, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/99-01-02-05274; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., Church Records, 1709–1760, ancestry.com; Andrew Barton (pseudonym of Thomas Forrest), The Disappointment or, the Force of Credulity, ed. David Mays (Gainesville, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1976): 1–37; Benjamin M. Nead, G. Washington, and Thomas Procter, “A Sketch of General Thomas Procter, with Some Account of the First Pennsylvania Artillery in the Revolution,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 4, no. 4 (1880): 454–470; Rev. S. F. Hotchkin, Ancient and Modern Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill (Philadelphia, PA: P.W. Ziegler & Co., 1889): 181–184; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848, vol. 5, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott & Co.): 204–205.