Nathan Sanford (1777-1838) was a prominent politician and lawyer from Flushing who held a variety of elected state and federal offices for a period of 29 years extending from 1802 to 1831. At various points in his career, he served as United States district attorney, New York state assemblyman and senator, and finally as a US senator.

Born in Bridgehampton, Long Island, on November 5, 1777, he was educated at Clinton Academy in East Hampton and studied law at Litchfield Law School and Yale University. After passing the bar in 1799, he practiced law in New York City. Sanford was appointed as US commissioner in bankruptcy in 1802 and, a year later, was appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as US attorney for the district of New York, a post he held until 1816.

He was elected to the New York State Assembly and served from 1808 to 1809, and then briefly as speaker in 1811, though he had to relinquish that role due to ill health. He then served as New York State senator from 1812 to 1815, followed by a term in the US Senate, from 1815 to 1821. He was defeated in his second run for the US senate by future-president Martin Van Buren. He served as a delegate to the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1821, and as Chancellor of New York, then the highest judicial officer in the state, from 1823 to 1826. He was again elected to the US Senate in 1826, where he served until the end of his term in 1831.

Sanford married three times and fathered seven children. His first wife, Elizabeth Van Horn, died in 1811, and he then married Mary Isaacs in 1813. Following her death in 1816, he was last married to Mary Buchanan, who survived him.

Following his last term in the US Senate in 1831, he settled in Flushing and continued his law practice. By 1836, he had erected a three-story Greek Revival-style mansion on a large area of land located between Parsons Avenue on the east and what is now Kissena Boulevard on the west. Sanford died on October 17, 1838, of tuberculosis. In 1844, the property became a private psychiatric hospital. By 1910, the institution was no longer in use and the land was eventually sold. Sanford Avenue extends from Delong Street in the east to Northern Boulevard in the west, and passes through the area where Sanford’s mansion once stood.