The Bates family is an American political and banking family from Maine and Massachusetts whose members include a prominent member of the prestigious Hell Fire Club, the 26th U.S. Attorney General serving under Abraham Lincoln, the second Governor of Missouri, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Arkansas, and a prominent textile tycoon who founded the Bates Manufacturing Company and Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. The family includes various merchants, politicians, inventors, clergymen, artists, and socialites.