Top of page

Who Is the Distinguished Man of Mystery?

Share this post:

The following is a guest post by Taru Spiegel, Reference Specialist in the European Division.

Whenever I enter the Law Library offices, I see a nice grouping of items on the north wall.

The large image features S. 68 which established the Law Library of Congress in 1832.  The image on the right is of Senator William Learned Marcy from the Committee on the Judiciary who reported the bill.

The subsequent Act of July 14, 1832 created a separate “Law Department” of the Library of Congress.  The Law Library moved into its own room in the Capitol Building adjacent to the Main Library where it was largely controlled by the justices of the Supreme Court.  In 1833, Charles Henry Wharton Meehan was appointed “assistant at law,” becoming the first Law Librarian of Congress.

C.H.W. Meehan was the son of the then Librarian of Congress, John Silva Meehan, and he “was the only survivor of the political changes made in the Library during the first days of the Lincoln administration in 1861.   C.H.W. Meehan remained at his post until his death on July 5, 1872.”

Looking up S. 68 in the Library’s American Memory database, it was fairly easy to determine that Senator William Learned Marcy is the gentleman on the right side of the grouping.

WHO is the person on the left?

He does not look like John Silva Meehan, Librarian of Congress…

Not quite Chief Justice John Marshall

Perhaps he is Charles Henry Wharton Meehan, the political survivor, but I have not been able to find a picture of him.

Someone please identify the mystery man.  Inquiring minds want to know, or for the Twitter crowd, IMWTK.

Comments (6)

  1. Do you have a larger/better photo? I’ll send this to AskMetafilter and see what they think.

  2. Fascinating! How long has the image been hanging there? Did you take it out of the frame?

  3. lets know so he stops being a mystery man with same surnames you got to look in another countrys…..

    • Keeping watching for an update!

  4. The Man of Mystery has now been revealed!

Add a Comment

This blog is governed by the general rules of respectful civil discourse. You are fully responsible for everything that you post. The content of all comments is released into the public domain unless clearly stated otherwise. The Library of Congress does not control the content posted. Nevertheless, the Library of Congress may monitor any user-generated content as it chooses and reserves the right to remove content for any reason whatever, without consent. Gratuitous links to sites are viewed as spam and may result in removed comments. We further reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to remove a user's privilege to post content on the Library site. Read our Comment and Posting Policy.


Required fields are indicated with an * asterisk.