Cowles Mead

Cowles Mead was a United States representative from Georgia. Born in Virginia, he received an English education and became a private practice lawyer.
He presented credentials as a member-elect to the 9th United States Congress but was replaced by Thomas Spalding who contested the initial election outcome. Mead then served as Secretary of the Mississippi Territory, 1806–1807; Acting Governor of Mississippi Territory, 1806–1807; and member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, 1807 and 1822–23.
He was unsuccessful candidate for election to the 13th United States Congress in 1812. He was a delegate to the first constitutional convention for setting up the new State of Mississippi in 1817. He was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the 16th United States Congress in 1818. He served in the Mississippi Senate in 1821. He was later the Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Mississippi state legislature, from 1823 to 1827. He was also an unsuccessful candidate for election as governor of Mississippi in 1825. He died 19 years later in 1844 on his Greenwood Plantation in Hinds County, Mississippi where he was buried.
An article published in 1849 described his involvement in the arrest of Aaron Burr and the writer's impression of Mead's character:
Mead's house, called Meadvilla, stood along the main street of Washington, Mississippi Territory. After his time it was used as the Washington Hotel and later purchased and occupied for many years by Benjamin L. C. Wailes.