Littleton Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on October 19, 1797. He graduated from Princeton College in 1815. He studied law in Washington, D.C., was admitted to the bar in 1821, and returned to New Brunswick to begin his practice. He was master in court chancery in 1824, and surrogate of Middlesex County from 1831 to 1836.

He was Mayor of New Brunswick, New Jersey from 1841 to 1842. His grandfather John Bubenheim Bayard had been elected mayor of the city in 1790.

Kirkpatrick served as a trustee of Rutgers College from 1841 to 1859. He was elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth Congress, serving in office one term from March 4, 1843 to March 3, 1845. He was chairman of the Committee on Revisal and Unfinished Business.

He died in Saratoga Springs, New York on August 15, 1859. He was interred in the Presbyterian Cemetery in New Brunswick. He was reinterred in Van Liew Cemetery, North Brunswick, New Jersey in 1921.

His wife, Sophia, remained in the city of New Brunswick after Littleton's death. When she died on March 6, 1871 at the age of 68, she named Rutgers College as her estate's residuary legatee.[1] Rutgers used the proceeds of this bequest to build Kirkpatrick Chapel in 1873. Today, this chapel is located on the historic Queen's Campus section of Rutgers's College Avenue Campus.

• United States Congress. "Littleton Kirkpatrick (id: K000236)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Littleton Kirkpatrick at The Political Graveyard
• Littleton Kirkpatrick at Find a Grave