Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/306

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276

��THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

��his brother James, who afterward achieved a wide reputation as a law- yer, jurist and author. He chose law as his profession and commenced practice at Durham, N. H. In 1772 he was commissioned a major in the militia, and took a part in the capture of Fort William and Mary in 1774. He was elected this same year, with Na- thaniel Folsom, a delegate to the first Continental Congress, and was re- elected to the second congress, which was held at Philadelphia from May 10, 1775, to December 12, 1776. June 22, 1775, however, Congress ap- pointed him a brigadier-general, and major-general, July 29, 1776, in which position he did brilliant service, espe- cially in Rhode Island, till he resigned in 1779. He was elected to congress again in 1780, and was re-elected in 1 78 1. In 1782 he accepted the posi- tion of attorney-general for the state, holding it till 1 786, when he was elected president of the slate, hold- ing the office for two years. He was president of the state convention that ratified the Constitution of the United States, and was chosen one of the presidential electors at the first presi- dential election, giving his vote for Washington and Adams. At the March election of the same year, 1789, he was again chosen president of the state. President Washington, however, in organizing the judiciary, appointed him judge of the Federal District Court of New Hampshire, which position he held till his death, which occurred at Durham, January 23, 1795. His son, George Sullivan, had a career even more brilliant than that of his father, but it is hardly pos- sible to overestimate the value to the state, in the critical period in which he was a prominent actor, of the services of John Sullivan, member of the first Continental Congress, and first gov- ernor or president of the state after the adoption of the Federal Constitu- tion.

Josiah Bartlett, whose name, it will be remembered, always appears next to that of John Hancock in the

��lithographic and facsimile copies ot the Declaration of Independence, and who was the first after the president, John Hancock, to affix his name to that immortal instrument, was born at Amesbury, Mass., November 21, 1727, and received a thorough aca- demical education. Like numerous other members of the Bartlett family in New England, he chose the pro- fession of medicine, and after study- ing under Dr. Ordway, at Amesbury, commenced the practice of his pro- fession at Kingston, New Hampshire, a little prior to the year 1750. He occupied a prominent position in co- lonial politics, and was several times a member of the colonial legislature, beside filling various offices of trust and honor in the royal government of the colony. He was not a member of the first Continental Congress, but was chosen a delegate to the second, which met at Philadelphia, May 10, 1775, taking his seat in September of that year. He resigned his seat in November, 1 778, and returned to New Hampshire, where he was soon after (though he had previously had no le- gal training), appointed chief-justice of the court of common pleas. In 1 782 he was transferred to the superior bench and served as one of the jus- tices till, in 1788, he was appointed chief-justice of the state. After the adoption of the Federal Constitution he was elected to the United States Senate, but declined, and about the same time also resigned his office as chief-justice. In 1 790 he was elected president of the state, and in 1792 was an active member of the state constitutional convention, which, among other changes, substituted the title of governor for that of president for the chief-executive officer of the state. He was elected governor in 1793, being the first chief-magistrate who bore that title. He retained, with a true physician's instinct, his interest in medical science during his lifetime, and took an active part in the forma- tion of the New Hampshire Medical Society in 1 791, and was chosen as

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