In 1828, the year he was born, his father was elected to the New York State Assembly as a member of the Anti-Masonic Party.

His maternal grandparents were Reverend Lemuel Powers Jr., a Baptist minister, and Abigail Newland-Powers.

After practicing law in Buffalo, New York as the partner of E. Carleton Sprague, he was appointed a federal court clerk.

[2] After the death of his mother, in 1853, his father married Caroline Carmichael McIntosh;[6] a union which Millard Powers Fillmore reportedly never accepted.

His will directed that all his family correspondence (including that with his father) be burned, the motive for which was the subject of much speculation.