PoliticalGraveyard.com

Politicians in Trouble or Disgrace

Politicians in Trouble or Disgrace: Usury
Charging illegally high interest rates on loans

See the trouble and disgrace main page, as well as the FAQ and the Political Graveyard privacy policy, for important explanations and disclaimers. in chronological order   Russell Sage (1816-1906) — also known as "The Sage of Troy"; "The Money King"; "Father of Puts and Calls"; "Old Straddle" — of Troy, Rensselaer County, N.Y.; New York, New York County, N.Y. Born in Verona, Oneida County, N.Y., August 4, 1816. Whig. Merchant; banker; Rensselaer County Treasurer; delegate to Whig National Convention from New York, 1848; U.S. Representative from New York 13th District, 1853-57; railroad builder; arrested in 1869 and charged with violation of New York usury laws by charging high interest rates on loans; fined and sentenced to five days in prison, which was later suspended. On December 4, 1891, Henry Norcross, a stockbroker, brought a bomb to Sage's office in New York City as part of an extortion scheme; when his demands were refused, he detonated the bomb, but Sage suffered only minor injuries. Died in Lawrence, Nassau County, Long Island, N.Y., July 22, 1906 (age 89 years, 352 days). Interment at Oakwood Cemetery, Troy, N.Y.   Relatives: Son of Prudence (Risley) Sage and Elisha Sage, Jr.; married, January 23, 1840, to Maria-Henrie Winne; married, November 24, 1869, to Margarett Olivia Slocum; fourth great-grandnephew of Robert Treat; second cousin once removed of Edgar Jared Doolittle; second cousin twice removed of Thomas Chittenden and Jonathan Brace; third cousin once removed of Martin Chittenden, Thomas Kimberly Brace, Alvah Nash and Dwight May Sabin; third cousin twice removed of Josiah Cowles; third cousin thrice removed of Robert Treat Paine; fourth cousin of Jeduthun Wilcox and Chittenden Lyon; fourth cousin once removed of Daniel Chapin, Orsamus Cook Merrill, Timothy Merrill, Daniel Upson, Greene Carrier Bronson, Daniel Kellogg, John Russell Kellogg, Leonard Wilcox, John Adams Taintor, John Calhoun Lewis, Millard Fillmore, Daniel Fiske Kellogg, Henry G. Taintor, Henry Gould Lewis and Daniel Frederick Webster.   Political families: Kellogg-Adams-Seymour-Chapin family of Connecticut and New York; Murphy-Merrill family of Harbor Beach, Michigan (subsets of the Four Thousand Related Politicians).   See also congressional biography — Govtrack.us page

"Enjoy the hospitable entertainment of a political graveyard." Henry L. Clinton, Apollo Hall, New York City, February 3, 1872

The Political Graveyard is a web site about U.S. political history and cemeteries. Founded in 1996, it is the Internet's most comprehensive free source for American political biography, listing 320,919 politicians, living and dead.
	The coverage of this site includes (1) the President, Vice President, members of Congress, elected state and territorial officeholders in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories; and the chief elected official, typically the mayor, of qualifying municipalities; (2) candidates at election, including primaries, for any of the above; (3) all federal judges and all state appellate judges; (4) certain federal officials, including the federal cabinet, diplomatic chiefs of mission, consuls, U.S. district attorneys, collectors of customs and internal revenue, members of major federal commissions; and political appointee (pre-1969) postmasters of qualifying communities; (5) state and national political party officials, including delegates, alternate delegates, and other participants in national party nominating conventions; (6) Americans who served as "honorary" consuls for other nations before 1950. Note: municipalities or communities "qualify", for Political Graveyard purposes, if they have at least half a million person-years of history, inclusive of predecessor, successor, and merged entities.
	The listings are incomplete; development of the database is a continually ongoing project.
	Information on this page — and on all other pages of this site — is believed to be accurate, but is not guaranteed. Users are advised to check with other sources before relying on any information here.
	The official URL for this page is: https://politicalgraveyard.com/trouble/usury.html.
	Links to this or any other Political Graveyard page are welcome, but specific page addresses may sometimes change as the site develops.
	If you are searching for a specific named individual, try the alphabetical index of politicians.
Copyright notices: (1) Facts are not subject to copyright; see Feist v. Rural Telephone. (2) Politician portraits displayed on this site are 70-pixel-wide monochrome thumbnail images, which I believe to constitute fair use under applicable copyright law. Where possible, each image is linked to its online source. However, requests from owners of copyrighted images to delete them from this site are honored. (3) Original material, programming, selection and arrangement are © 1996-2023 Lawrence Kestenbaum. (4) This work is also licensed for free non-commercial re-use, with attribution, under a Creative Commons License.
Site information: The Political Graveyard is created and maintained by Lawrence Kestenbaum, who is solely responsible for its structure and content. — The mailing address is The Political Graveyard, P.O. Box 2563, Ann Arbor MI 48106. — This site is hosted by HDL. — The Political Graveyard opened on July 1, 1996; the last full revision was done on March 8, 2023.