Lieutenant Vacant Spouse(s) None Political party Republican Party Republican Party | Preceded by Samuel T. Day Education Colby College Preceded by Ossian B. Hart Name Marcellus Stearns Resigned January 2, 1877 | |
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Born April 29, 1839
Lovell, Maine ( 1839-04-29 ) Role Former Governor of Florida Died December 8, 1891, Palatine Bridge, New York, United States Previous office Governor of Florida (1874–1877) | ||
Succeeded by George Franklin Drew | ||
Marcellus Lovejoy Stearns (April 29, 1839 – December 8, 1891) was an American politician, who served from 1874 to 1877 as the 11th Governor of Florida during the Reconstruction Era.
Born in Lovell in Oxford County in southwestern Maine, he attended Colby College in Waterville, Maine. In 1861, he left to join the Union Army and lost an arm during the Battle of Opequon in Winchester, Virginia, after which the Army sent him to study law. He was assigned to Quincy in Gadsden County in the Florida Panhandle, where he remained after his discharge from the military.
Stearns was a member of the Florida Constitutional Convention of 1868 and the Florida House of Representatives from 1868 through 1872, of which he was the Speaker in 1869. He was elected the fifth Lieutenant Governor of Florida in 1872. He succeeded to the governorship on March 18, 1874, when Ossian B. Hart died of pneumonia. Stearns attempted to force Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs to resign his post as Superintendent of Public Instruction, but was unsuccessful due to Gibbs' immense popularity. After leaving office on January 2, 1877, he was appointed U. S. Commissioner in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a post that he held until 1880. He died in Palatine Bridge, New York, fifty miles from the capital city of Albany. He is interred in the village of Center Lovell, Maine.
After he left office on 2 January 1877, there was no Republican governor of Florida until 1967, when Claude Kirk was inaugurated.