Isaac Wayne

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Isaac Wayne (1772–1852) was an American politician from Pennsylvania who served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Federalist from 1823 to 1825. He also held state offices in Pennsylvania, serving in the House of Representatives (1799–1801, 1806) and in the State Senate (1807–1810).

Born at Waynesborough in Easttown Township, Pennsylvania, he was the son of Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne and Mary Penrose Wayne, and the grandson of Isaac Wayne. He studied at Dickinson College, graduating in 1792, and became a lawyer in Chester County in 1795.

During the War of 1812, Wayne raised and led a company of Pennsylvania horse cavalry and later commanded the Second Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. He unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1814 but was later elected to Congress in 1823. He married Elizabeth Smith on August 25, 1802, and they had five children.

A notable episode in his life occurred in 1809 when he went to Fort Presque Isle to exhume his father’s remains and had them reburied at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Radnor, Pennsylvania, after transporting the bones across the state. He published a memoir of his father in 1829 and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1840.

Wayne died on October 25, 1852, at the family estate in Easttown Township and was buried in the family plot at St. David’s Episcopal Church in Radnor, Pennsylvania, alongside James Buchanan and Samuel Edwards.