Graham N. Fitch


 * For the South African pianist, please see Graham Fitch



Graham Newell Fitch (December 5, 1809 – November 29, 1892) was a United States Representative and Senator from Indiana. Born in LeRoy, New York, he attended Middlebury Academy and Geneva College; he studied medicine and completed his medical course at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and commenced practice in Logansport, Indiana in 1834. He was a member of the Indiana House of Representatives in 1836 and 1839, and was a professor of anatomy at the Rush Medical College in Chicago from 1844 to 1848, and at the Indianapolis Medical College in 1878.

Fitch was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses, serving from March 4, 1849 to March 3, 1853; he was not a candidate for renomination in 1852 and resumed the practice of medicine. He was elected to the U.S. Senate to fill a vacancy in the term beginning March 4, 1855, and served from February 4, 1857, to March 3, 1861; he was not a candidate for reelection in 1860. While in the Senate, he was chairman of the Committee on Printing (Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses). During the Civil War he raised the Forty-sixth Regiment, Indiana Volunteer Infantry and served as its colonel. During the battles of New Madrid & Island No. 10 Colonel Fitch commanded the second brigade of General John M. Palmer's division. He also participated in the capture of Fort Pillow and Memphis and commanded the Union infantry forces at Saint Charles. 1862 he resigned because of injuries received in action. He resumed the practice of medicine in Logansport and died there in 1892; interment was in Mount Hope Cemetery.

Edwin Denby, Fitch's grandson, was a U.S. Representative from Michigan and Secretary of the Navy.