Thomas Ewing (28 December 1789 – 26 October 1871) was a US Senator from Ohio (NR) from 4 March 1831 to 4 March 1837 (succeeding Jacob Burnet and preceding William Allen) and from 20 July 1850 to 4 March 1851 (succeeding Thomas Corwin and preceding Benjamin Wade), Secretary of the Treasury from 4 March to 11 September 1841 (succeeding Levi Woodbury and preceding Walter Forward), and Secretary of the Interior from 8 March 1849 to 22 July 1850 (preceding Thomas McKean Thompson McKennan). He was the foster father and father-in-law of William Tecumseh Sherman and the father of Union general and congressman Thomas Ewing Jr..
Biography[]
Thomas Ewing was born in West Liberty, Ohio County, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1789, and he became a lawyer in Lancaster, Ohio in 1816. He was elected to the US Senate in 1830, but he was defeated for re-election. In 1841, he served as Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, but Ewing was one of almost the entire cabinet (except for Daniel Webster) to resign after Tyler vetoed the Banking Act later that year. Ewing later served as the first Secretary of the Interior from 1849 to 1850 under President Zachary Taylor, and he resigned in order to serve in the Senate from 1850 to 1851, finishing Thomas Corwin's unexpired term. He died in Lancaster in 1871 at the age of 81.