John Lansing, Jr.

All you want to know about John Lansing, Jr.

John Lansing, Jr.

John Ten Eyck Lansing, Jr. (January 30, 1754 Albany, New York - vanished December 12, 1829 New York City), was an American lawyer and politician. He was the uncle of Gerrit Y. Lansing.

From 1776 until 1777 during the Revolutionary War Lansing served as a military secretary to General Philip Schuyler. Afterwards he was a member of the New York State Assembly from 1780 to 1784, in 1785-86, and 1788-89, being its speaker during the latter two terms. In 1786, he was appointed Mayor of Albany. He represented New York at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. At this convention he greatly opposed any law that would unify the United States under one single government. When the convention decided to propose a new plan which included uniting the independent states, he and Robert Yates walked out leaving a letter for their reasons. Lansing and Yates never signed the constitution. On 15 February 1798 he was appointed Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court. In 1801, he became the second Chancellor of New York, succeeding Robert R. Livingston.

On the evening of December 12, 1829, he left his Manhattan hotel to mail a letter at a New York City dock and was never seen again. Lansing was 75 years old and was presumed drowned or perhaps murdered. A cenotaph was erected at Albany Rural Cemetery. His widow died in 1834.

His fate was a major mystery in New York State at the time, rivaled only by the disappearance of William Morgan, the anti-Mason writer, in 1826 in upstate New York. In the last century it has somehow become rather forgotten, especially with the disappearance of New York State Justice Joseph Force Crater in 1930. There has been only one major clue to Lansing's disappearance that has appeared since his death. After his death in 1882 the memoirs of Thurlow Weed, former Republican political leader in New York State, were published by T. W. Barnes (Weed's grandson). Weed wrote that Lansing had been murdered by several prominent political and social figures who found he was in the way of their projects. Weed was told this by an unnamed individual, who showed him papers to prove it, but begged Weed not to publish these until all the individuals had died. Weed said they were all dead by 1870, but he found that their families were all highly respected, and upon advice of two friends he decided not to reveal the truth because it would hurt innocent people. And that was the last anyone ever heard of a possible resolution to the mystery. It is unknown if Weed actually received the truth.

Sources

John Lansing, Jr. at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
Several Bios
Lansing Family Tree
Bio at the NARA
John Lansing, Jr. biography
Edmund Pearson Instigation of the Devil (New York, London: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1930), Chapter XXIII: A Rather Mysterious Chancellor, p. 277-287, 355.

Preceded by David Gelston	Speaker of the New York State Assembly 1786	Succeeded by Richard Varick
Preceded by Richard Varick	Speaker of the New York State Assembly 1788 – 1789	Succeeded by Gulian Verplanck
Preceded by Robert R. Livingston	Chancellor of New York 1801 - 1814	Succeeded by James Kent