George Bliss

Who was George Bliss?

George Bliss was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio.

Bliss was born in Jericho, Vermont. He attended Granville College. Moved to Ohio in 1832, studied law with David Kellogg Cartter, was admitted to the bar in 1841 and became Cartter's law partner in Akron, Ohio.

Bliss was Mayor of Akron in 1850. In 1850 he was appointed the presiding judge of the eighth judicial district and continued in that role until the office was discontinued after a constitutional change.

He was elected to the Thirty-third Congress as a Democrat. Bliss subsequently withdrew his nomination for re-election. He continued practising law in Wooster, Ohio. In 1858, he was principal counsel and attorney in the Oberlin–Wellington Rescue case, assisting George Belden of Canton, the United States District Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, in the prosecution. Both conspirators were found guilty by the jury in the court of judge Hiram V. Willson, and punished.

Bliss was elected to the Thirty-eighth congress and was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1864. He was a delegate to the Union National Convention at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1866.