politics for the Democratic Party during Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Josiah Randall was a Whig in politics, but drifted into the Democratic fold after the Whig Party dissolved in the 1850s. When Randall was born, the family lived at Seventh and Walnut Streets in what is now Center City Philadelphia. Randall was educated at the University Academy, a school affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. On completing school at age 17, he did not follow his father into the law, but instead took a job as a bookkeeper with a local silk merchant. Shortly thereafter, he started a coal delivery business and, at age 21, became a partner in a scrap iron business named Earp and Randall. Two years later, in 1851, Randall married Fannie Agnes Ward, the daughter of Aaron and Mary Watson Ward of Sing Sing, New York. Randall's new father-in-law was a major general in the New York militia and had served in Congress as a Jacksonian Democrat for several terms between 1825 and 1843. Randall and Fannie went on to have three children: Ann, Susan, and Samuel Josiah. Local politics and military service In 1851, Randall assisted his father in the election campaign for a local judge. The judge, a Whig, was elected despite considerable opposition from a candidate of the nativist American Party (commonly called the "Know-Nothing Party"). The strength of this group, combined with the Whigs' declining fortunes, led Samuel Randall to call himself an "American Whig" when he ran for Philadelphia Common Council the following year. He was elected, holding office for four one-year terms from 1852 to 1856. The period was one of significant change in Philadelphia's governance, as all of Philadelphia County's townships and boroughs were consolidated into one city in 1854. As the Whig Party fell apart, Randall and his family became Democrats. Josiah Randall was friendly with James Buchanan, a Pennsylvania Democrat then serving as the United States' envoy in Great Britain. Both Randall and his father attended the Democratic National Convention in 1856 to work for Buchanan's nomination for president, which was successful. When, in 1858, a vacancy occurred in Randall's state Senate district, he ran for election (as a Democrat) for the remainder of the term, and was elected. Still only 30 years old, Randall had risen rapidly in politics. Much of his term in the state Senate was spent dealing with the incorporation of street railway companies,