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The Many Lives of Representative Barzillai Gannett of Massachusetts | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives
Since it was first published in 1859, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress has provided readers with information about the lives and careers of federal lawmakers. The long-running publication, which has been printed in hardback by what was formerly known as the Government Printing Office (now the Government Publishing Office) since 1903 and has been maintained online by the House and Senate since 1998, is in many respects a living historical document. As new lawmakers come to Capitol Hill, and as new information about former Members is discovered, congressional historians regularly update the Biographical Directory’s contents.Some updates are routine, like adding a college graduation date for a recent Member or the burial location for nineteenth-century lawmakers. But the Office of the House Historian also undertakes larger revision projects, including an effort to clarify antebellum political party affiliations in the Biographical Directory. Recently, for instance, the Office of the Historian changed the party identification for early “Republican” lawmakers to the more accurate Democratic Republican label in order to prevent any confusion with the modern Republican Party, which was founded in the 1850s.Among the hundreds of Members who became Democratic Republicans was Congressman Barzillai Gannett, who served in the 11th Congress (1809–1811) and who represented a large Massachusetts district that would eventually become the state of Maine. A one-term Member with a long tenure in local government, Gannett’s profile in the Biographical Directory in 2024 looked much as it had in the 1927 edition of the publication:“GANNETT, Barzillai, a Representative from Massachusetts; born in Bridgewater, Mass., June 17, 1764; was graduated from Harvard University in 1785; studied theology, but did not enter the ministry; selectman of Pittston, Maine (then a district of Massachusetts), in 1793, 1794, 1796-1798,1801, and 1802; town clerk in 1794; moderator 1797-1802; selectman and assessor, Gardiner, Maine, 1803-1808; appointed as the first postmaster of Gardiner and served from September 30, 1804, to October 1, 1809; moderator 1804-1806, 1808, 1809, and 1811; member of the Massachusetts house of representatives in 1805 and 1806; served in the Massachusetts senate in 1807 and 1808; elected as a Republican to the Eleventh and Twelfth Congresses and served from March 4, 1809, until his resignation in 1812; died in New York City in 1832.”Although the Biographical Directory seemed to thoroughly document Gannett’s early career, it said little about his activities in the 20 years after leaving Congress. Eager to fill out more of Gannett’s biography, the Office of the Historian began to research his life, revealing a complex narrative of fraud, jailbreak, and false identity.Barzillai at HomeRepresentative Barzillai Gannett of Massachusetts was born in Bridgewater, in the British colonial province of Massachusetts, on June 17, 1764, to Joseph and Elizabeth Gannett, the youngest of six children. His family had owned land in Massachusetts for more than 100 years, and with the outbreak of hostilities between the colonies and the crown, his father joined the fight to secure America’s independence from Britain in the Revolution. Gannett studied theology at Harvard College (now Harvard University) and graduated in 1785. He moved to Pittston, Massachusetts (now Maine), where he was active in local government, before settling across the Kennebec River in the town of Gardiner sometime in 1802 or 1803. Gannett, who was once described as “popular to an unusual degree for a man in public life,” served as the first postmaster of Gardiner before representing his community in the Massachusetts state house and subsequently in the state senate from 1805 to 1808.From Maine to WashingtonIn 1808, Gannett was elected as a Democratic Republican to the 11th Congress from Massachusetts’ Seventeenth District, which covered much of what is now the state of Maine. His term seemed routine. Although there is no known record of him giving a speech on the floor, Gannett served on the Committee on Elections and regularly participated in House votes. In December 1809, Gannett, in one of his only known floor actions, presented a petition on behalf of a constituent, Phineas Varney, who sought to be released from jail and to have his $3,000 fine for breaking an embargo revoked. Although a bill addressing Varney’s petition passed the House, it died in committee in the Senate.A few years later, Gannett again focused his efforts on helping free someone from prison, only this time it was himself.“Your Distressed & Brokenhearted Fellow Creature”Although Gannett won re-election to the 12th Congress (1811–1813), he never took his seat. On July 23, 1811, a little less than five months before the 12th Congress was set to begin, Gannett was arrested and charged with fraud, forgery, and embezzlement, having been accused of altering official records while serving as clerk of a Kennebec County court. On the day of his arrest, he deeded the house he had built in Gardiner to members of his wife’s family. From his jail cell in Augusta six days later on July 29, Gannett penned a short yet dramatic resignation letter to the Governor of Massachusetts, former U.S. Representative Elbridge Gerry: “Sir I resign the office of Representative of the Kennebec district, in the twelfth Congress of the U.S. – and am very respectively, Sir, your distressed & brokenhearted fellow creature, B. Gannett.”For one reason or another—including the slow pace of mail delivery in the early nineteenth century—the governor did not accept and process Gannett’s resignation until February 1812. But by then, Gannett was long gone. Gannett had been released from jail in September 1811. Why the county released him isn’t clear; it was rumored that he was either freed under the pretense of attending the 12th Congress or that he had been aided by members of his Freemason fraternity, helping him escape in a canoe and travel to Boston by boat. Either way, he used his release to flee Massachusetts for good, seeming to leave behind his wife and their six children.A New Life Out West in OhioAfter leaving prison, Barzillai Gannett disappeared. But during the War of 1812, a man by the name of Benjamin Gardiner arrived in Columbus, Ohio, who, it turned out, bore a striking resemblance to Gannett—in fact, it was Gannett using a pseudonym featuring a new first name and using his hometown as his last name; he retained the initials: "B.G." Not only had Gannett made his way west, he had secured a position as quartermaster in the U.S. Army and settled into a new life, quickly becoming popular in his community. Gannett served as a bank president and school trustee, helped found a church, and married again in 1820. Local Episcopal church leader Philander Chase, with whom Gannett had worked closely, described him as “one of the best and most agreeable men I ever knew.”Gannett’s charade in Ohio purportedly came to an end sometime around 1822 when Chase’s son traveled to Maine and happened to meet Mrs. Gannett, who described her missing husband. The younger Chase thought the man sounded exactly like the Benjamin Gardiner that he knew in Ohio. When Philander Chase received a letter from his son describing the absconded Congressman and his accused misdeeds, he confronted Gannett, who then abandoned his second family, likely to avoid prosecution for bigamy and an inquiry into the murky circumstances behind his release after his arrest. Where he went or what he did afterward remain unknown.The Search for GannettIn 1859, 37 years after the former Congressman was last seen, the editor of the local newspaper in Gardiner, Maine, printed a timeline of Gannett’s exploits in a column titled “Reminisces of Gardiner.” According to the editor, William A. Drew, Gannett’s escape and double life was something of an inside job. Drew wrote that Gannett’s wife, convinced of his innocence, abetted him in fleeing and kept in contact with him until he was no longer able to send money back to the family in Maine. Drew also wrote that it had been the elder Philander Chase who traveled to the East Coast on church business and met with Gannett’s son, who was also involved in Episcopalian affairs. In this version of events, Gannett’s son knew his father’s pseudonym and asked Chase about him. While certain elements of Drew’s account seem plausible, not everything lines up: the elder Chase was serving as president of Cincinnati College in 1822, and both he and his son were ill for long stretches of time that year, which would have made trips to New England challenging, if not impossible.The details of Gannett’s second disappearing act are hard to verify and have long bedeviled congressional historians. In the late 1920s, the Joint Committee on Printing—which managed the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress in the early twentieth century—worked to confirm the details of Gannett’s life as part of a larger effort to fact check information for every lawmaker. As part of the verification process, the joint committee contacted all known family of each former Member for information, sending out a form where a relative could document the details of their ancestor’s life. When a Member’s family could not be located, the joint committee relied on the assistance of local postmasters to forward their inquiries to other recipients—a former colleague who may have known the congressman or an unofficial local historian.In September 1928, the joint committee sent its survey seeking information on Gannett to the postmaster in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. A joint committee clerk had authored a plaintive note scrawled on the edge of the standard form: “Can you not hand this to someone who can aid us?” The survey made its way to the librarian of the National Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, who then forwarded it to the Ohio State Historical Society in Columbus. Staff at the Ohio State Historical Society questioned many of the details in Gannett’s biography as the joint committee understood them, including whether Chase’s son would have had enough time on his trip to make contact with Mrs. Gannett given that his visit back East was short and he was singularly focused on securing funding for his father’s church. “At any rate,” the historical society noted, “we have no papers which could give us the slightest clue to Gardiner while he lived [in Ohio] or afterwards.” Without proper documentation, the Biographical Directory remained light on the details of Gannett’s life.Revising the Biographical DirectoryIn fact, between 1911 and 2024, Barzillai Gannett’s entry in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress said nothing about his life after leaving the House, only that he had died in New York City in 1832. But even that date turned out to be untrustworthy. The date of his death comes from an 1851 letter from Barzillai’s nephew, Ezra Stiles Gannett, in which Ezra states that he heard that his uncle had traveled through Salem, Massachusetts, around 1832, but that the family never again heard from him. Ezra believed that his uncle had died during a cholera epidemic—or maybe in a steamboat accident along the Hudson River—but provided no evidence for either claim.Rumors also persisted that Barzillai had set off on yet another new life after leaving Ohio, having escaped north to Canada or possibly having accepted a teaching job in Virginia. But as of September 2025, the whereabouts of Gannett remain unknown. Despite extensive research using archival collections in Maine, Massachusetts, and Ohio, the Office of the Historian has yet been unable to determine Gannett’s fate or document other aliases.Staff at the Office of the Historian have, however, updated Barzillai Gannett’s entry in the Biographical Directory to include details about his life in Ohio and clarify that the date and circumstances of his death are unknown. His Ohio alias, Benjamin Gardiner, is now listed in his entry to better aid researchers interested in exploring his life story.The Biographical Directory remains a collaborative effort between the historians who maintain it and the general public. But instead of relying on paper surveys sent to postmasters, editors now receive suggestions and inquiries through an email inbox. Staff dedicate significant amounts of time and use a wide variety of print and digital material to verify potential changes to a Member’s entry in the Biographical Directory. If or when the details of Gannett’s second disappearing act come to light, the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress will differentiate fact from fiction.If you have research that could help historians close the Gannett/Gardiner case, please email the Office of Historian: history@mail.house.gov.Sources: Annals of Congress, House, 11th Cong., 1st sess. (23 May 1809): 60; House Journal, 11th Cong., 2nd sess. (14 December 1809): 133; Annals of Congress, Senate, 11th Cong., 2nd sess. (28 March 1810): 632; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2005): xii-xiii; Survey from the Joint Committee on Printing, 18 September 1928, Box 23, research file for Barzillai Gannett, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Research Collection, Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives; Letter from “HGS,” ca. 1928, Box 23, research file for Barzillai Gannett, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Research Collection, Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1927 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1927): 998; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1911, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911): 663; U.S. Army Register of Enlistments, 1798-1913, M233, roll 15, page 224, National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.fold3.com/; Maine supreme judicial court records, 1810-10-01–1814-10-31, Kennebec County, Maine State Archives, container 31133: 250; Barzillai Gannett to Elbridge Gerry, 29 July 1811, Governor’s Council Files, GC3, series 378, Massachusetts State Archives; Essex Register (Essex, MA), 21 September 1811; 1820 United States Federal Census, Zanesville, Muskingum, M33, roll 92, page 101, National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/; Land Deed for Parcel in Franklin, OH, 8 March 1823, instrument number 182303080040057, Franklin County, OH, https://franklin.oh.publicsearch.us/doc/165427821; Gannett, Barzillai, HUG 300, box 366, Harvard University Biographical Files, Harvard University Archives; Buffalo Gazette (Buffalo, NY), 3 October 1811; Charleston Daily Courier (Charleston, SC), 21 September 1811; Portland Gazette and Maine Advertiser (Portland, ME), 29 July 1811; Reporter-Journal (Gardiner, ME), 1 August 1913; Rural Intelligencer (Gardiner, ME), 15 January 1859; Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Elections, 1788–1997 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1998); Michael R. Gannett, The Gannetts in America (Wilton, CT: self-published, 1954); Michael R. Gannett, Gannett Descendants of Matthew and Hannah Gannett of Scituate Massachusetts (Chevy Chase, MD: self-published, 1976); Evelyn L. Gilmore, Christ Church, Gardiner, Maine: Antecedents and History (Gardiner, ME: Reporter-Journal Press, 1893); Ann N. Hansen, “As We Were Served: An Epitome of St. John Parish’s History,” in Brochure Prepared in Commemoration of the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of St. John's Episcopal Church in Worthington and Parts Adjacent, Ohio (Worthington, OH: St. John’s Episcopal Church, 1954); J.W. Hanson, History of Gardiner, Pittston and West Gardiner (Gardiner, ME: William Palmer, 1852); George Thomas Little et al., Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, vol. 1 (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1909); Lisa M. Klein, Be It Remembered: The Story of Trinity Episcopal Church on Capitol Square (Wilmington, OH: Orange Frazer Press, 2003); Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress: 1789–1989 (New York: MacMillan, 1989); Mitchell Nahum, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater in Plymouth County, Massachusetts (Bridgewater, MA: Henry T. Pratt, 1897); Laura Chase Smith, The Life of Philander Chase (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1903).