Virgil Maxcy (5 May 1785-28 February 1844) was Solicitor of the US Treasury from 29 May 1830 to 15 June 1837, preceding Henry D. Gilpin.
Biography[]
Virgil Maxcy was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts in 1785 and became a lawyer in Baltimore, Maryland in 1807. Originally a Federalist, he was elected to the Executive Council in 1815, served in the State Senate from 1817 to 1821, and in the House of Delegates from 1824 to 1825. Maxcy supported Andrew Jackson for the presidency in 1824 and 1828, and Jackson appointed him the first Solicitor of the US Treasury, serving from 1830 to 1837. From 1837 to 1842, he served as President Martin Van Buren's charge d'affaires to Belgium. On 28 February 1844, while accompanying President John Tyler to a demonstration of the US Navy's new weaponry, he was killed when a bow gun exploded in the USS Princeton disaster.