page_title: Elbridge Gerry
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Elbridge Gerry / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Elbridge Gerry House in Marblehead, Massachusetts, est. 1730.
context_page_description: Elbridge Thomas Gerry was an American politician and diplomat. As a Democratic-Republican he served as the fifth vice president of the United States under President James Madison from March 1813 until his death in November 1814. The political practice of gerrymandering is named after Gerry.
  Born into a wealthy merchant family, Gerry vocally opposed British colonial policy in the 1760s and was active in the early stages of organizing the resistance in the American Revolutionary War. Elected to the Second Continental Congress, Gerry signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. He was one of three men who attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 who refused to sign the United States Constitution because it did not then include a Bill of Rights. After its ratification he was elected to the inaugural United States Congress, where he was actively involved in drafting and passage of the Bill of Rights as an advocate of individual and state liberties.
  Gerry was at first opposed to the idea of political parties, and cultivated enduring friendships on both sides of the political divide between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans.
context_section_description: Gerry is generally remembered for the use of his name in the word gerrymander, for his refusal to sign the United States Constitution, and for his role in the XYZ Affair.  His path through the politics of the age has been difficult to characterize; early biographers, including his son-in-law James T. Austin and Samuel Eliot Morison, struggled to explain his apparent changes in position.  Biographer George Athan Billias posits that Gerry was a consistent advocate and practitioner of republicanism as it was originally envisioned, and that his role in the Constitutional Convention had a significant impact on the document it eventually produced.
  Gerry had ten children, of whom nine survived into adulthood:
  Catharine Gerry (1787–1850)
  Eliza Gerry (1791–1882)
  Ann Gerry (1791–1883)
  Elbridge Gerry, Jr. (1793–1867)
  Thomas Russell Gerry (1794–1848), who married Hannah Green Goelet (1804–1845)
  Helen Maria Gerry (1796–1864)
  James Thompson Gerry (1797–1854), who left West Point upon his father's death and was Commander of the war-sloop USS Albany (1846); the sloop disappeared with all hands September 28 or 29, 1854 near the West Indies.
  Eleanor Stanford Gerry (1800-1871)
  Emily Louisa Gerry (1802-1894)
  Gerry's grandson Elbridge Thomas Gerry became a distinguished lawyer and philanthropist in New York. His great-grandson, Peter G. Gerry (1879–1957), was a member of the US House of Representatives and later a US Senator from Rhode Island.
  Gerry is depicted in two of John Trumbull's paintings, the Declaration of Independence and General George Washington Resigning His Commission. Both are on view in the rotunda of the United States Capitol.
  The upstate New York town of Elbridge is believed to have been named in his honor, as is the western New York town of Gerry, in Chautauqua County. The town of Phillipston, Massachusetts was originally incorporated in 1786 under the name Gerry in his honor, but was changed to its present name after the town submitted a petition in 1812, citing Democratic-Republican support for the War of 1812.
  Gerry's Landing Road in Cambridge, Massachusetts is located near the Eliot Bridge not far from Elmwood.  During the 19th century, the area was known as Gerry's Landing (formerly known as Sir Richard's Landing), and was used by a Gerry relative for a short time as a landing and storehouse. The supposed house of his birth, the Elbridge Gerry House (it is uncertain whether he was born in the house currently standing on the site or an earlier structure) stands in Marblehead, and that town's Elbridge Gerry School is named in his honor.
caption: Elbridge Gerry House in Marblehead
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