Jonathan Trumbull Sr.

Jonathan Trumbull sr.

Jonathan Trumbull sr. (actually Jonathan Trumble , he changed his name in 1765 for unknown reasons; *  October 12, 1710 in Lebanon , Colony of Connecticut ; † August 17, 1785 ibid) was an American politician . He is one of the few people who was governor of a colony before the War of Independence and who was also governor of a state afterwards . During the Revolutionary War he was a great friend and helper to General George Washington . He supplied a large part of the Continental Army with essential goods and thus gained a lot of popularity, which he lost again due to wrong decisions in his governorship. Even so, he is still one of the most popular politicians from that time today.

Life

Jonathan Trumbull was the son of Joseph and Hannah Trumble. They had moved to Lebanon from Rowley , Massachusetts in 1705 . Jonathan Trumbull, who did not change the spelling of his surname until 1765, attended Harvard University from 1723 at the age of 13 to study theology there. In 1727 he completed his studies with a bachelor's degree , in 1730 he also acquired a Master of Arts degree and thus on October 13, 1730 also the license to preach in Colchester . He preached in this ward for a short time, and for a while it looked like he was going to be called to be a permanent pastor. However, he decided in the summer of 1731, his father and older brother Joseph Trumble, Jr. to help in their trading house. After his brother died in the spring of 1732 during a trading voyage on the high seas, he intensified his business efforts. He traded with European traders at the port of Boston and sold them cattle and other goods or bartered them for goods which he sold again in the regions around Lebanon and thus achieved considerable prosperity. While he was a trader, he studied law and considered a career in the civil service that began in May 1733 with the election to the General Assembly of Connecticut. On December 9, 1735, he married the pastor's daughter Faith Robinson (1718-1780), daughter of Reverend John Robinson and Hannah Wiswall from Duxbury, Massachusetts. The marriage had six children. In 1782 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

politics

Careers in Connecticut

Governor Jonathan Trumbull sr.

In May 1733 he was elected as a member of the House of Representatives of the Colony of Connecticut , from 1739 to 1740 he was the Speaker of the House. His marriage in 1735 - his wife, Faith Robinson's family was well known and respected - made him a welcome guest of Connecticut's higher society. This enormous increase in popularity came in handy for him in the elections: In 1740 he was elected to the Connecticut Senate and confirmed a total of 22 times in this office. He was then appointed to the court of justice of his county, later assistant judge ( assistant judge ) at the Supreme Court in Connecticut and finally from 1766 to 1769 chief justice ( chief justice ) at this court. When then Governor Thomas Fitch decided in 1765 to introduce the British Stamp Act , an act of the British government to receive money from the colonies, Trumbull rejected the law. This gave him political support from the Sons of Liberty , a movement of American patriots against their motherland Great Britain, which made William Pitkin governor of Connecticut and Trumbull deputy governor. After Pitkin's death on October 1, 1769, he resigned his office as judge and became governor of Connecticut himself. He stayed there until 1784 and then resigned. What was special about his tenure was that, as with only a few governors, it extended from colonial times to America's independence in 1776.

governor

After Pitkin's death and the subsequent appointment as governor, this office had to be defended in the election the following year. Trumbull got more votes than the re-running Thomas Fitch; However, neither of the two could unite the necessary absolute majority for themselves, as a number of other candidates could be put up for election. Notably, the election split Connecticut in two. While the bulk of Trumbull's voters came from the east of the state, Fitch's conservative voters were concentrated in western Connecticut. After the unclear election result, the assembly of the two chambers ( General Assembly ) was called upon to determine the election winner. They then confirmed Jonathan Trumbull in his office.

Jonathan Trumbull's shop converted into a war office on a drawing by John Warner Barber from 1835

On October 10, 1776, the Connecticut government's two chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate, met and ratified the Declaration of Independence. They also concluded, however, that the form of government under the new charter could not exist as before, because they did not consider the governor to be powerful enough. The establishment of the state of Connecticut from the area of ​​the state of Connecticut, under the new and old Governor Trumbull, secured him an enormous increase in power, which he particularly benefited during the Revolutionary War. As a loyal friend and advisor to George Washington, he assured him and the Continental Army of his full support. Probably his greatest support was providing about 60 percent of the military's strength, food, clothing, shoes, and ammunition. Connecticut was then given the unofficial nickname "The Provisions State". Trumbull's shop in Lebanon, once the headquarters of his trading empire, became a war office . It is said that, among others, George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette , Rochambeau , Benjamin Franklin , Samuel and John Adams, and Generals Israel Putnam and Henry Knox visited Trumbull at his home in Lebanon. During the winter of 1780/1781 he granted about 500 French soldiers the right to camp near his house under the direction of Duc de Lauzun.

As governor he insisted on Connecticut's historic claim to territories in the American West, and in October 1776 the General Assembly decided the formation of the County of Westmoreland in what is now Pennsylvania . Although he was initially unanimously re-elected (no one challenged him in re-election in 1775), he became increasingly unpopular over time. In 1779 he advocated the abolition of state wages and price controls. In 1781, rumors surfaced across the state that the governor was making illegal trade in Long Island, which is still under British control. Many believed that his personal goals were not necessarily for the good of the people.

For example, in October 1782, he told the General Assembly that all human beings were born equal but did not maintain that equality. In his opinion, a citizen cannot be on the same level as the governor he has elected.

"In the State of Nature all men are born equal, but they cannot continue this equality (...) there is danger of running into extreme equality, when each citizen would fain be upon a level with those he has chosen to govern him ... "

- Jonathan Trumbull

It was customary for the previous governors to rule for the rest of their lives, but Trumbull announced in May 1784 that he would not be re-elected at the next election. The rigors of the war had left its mark on him, but he also knew that he had fallen sharply in favor of the electorate and had not won three of his four gubernatorial elections with an absolute majority. He was succeeded as Connecticut Governor by Matthew Griswold .

death

After his resignation as a politician after more than 50 years in the service of Connecticut, first as a simple MP, later as a judge and finally as governor, he devoted himself again to theology. Since his financial resources were exhausted and the business was closed (during the war it had been converted into a war quarters; after that he had not continued it) the state of Connecticut granted him back payments in gratitude for his work in the war and the numerous overtime he was in Installments should be received within five to seven years. A contemporary biographer wrote that a bankrupt state would have paid a bankrupt governor. He died of a stroke on August 17, 1785 in his house in Lebanon, which is now a museum and is open to tourists.

Jonathan Trumbull is buried in the named after him Lebanon's Trumbull Cemetery . Lebanons city library is also named after him. In addition, streets in New Haven and Hartford, Fort Trumbull in New London, Trumbull College in Yale, the city of Trumbull in Connecticut, and Trumbull County in Ohio are all named after him. A vote in 1933 among students at Connecticut State College, now the University of Connecticut , resulted in the decision to baptize the mascot after Trumbull with the name Jonathan . Also, the dormitory on the University campus is called Trumbull House .

family

ancestors

• Great-grandparents: John Trumble and Ellenor Chandler emigrated from Newcastle upon Tyne , England to America around 1639 and first moved to Roxbury and later to Rowley, Massachusetts.
• Grandparents: John Trumble of Suffield, Connecticut and Deborah Jackson , father's parents; Captain John Higley of Windsor and Simsbury , mother's father
• Parents: Joseph Trumble (1678– June 16, 1755) and Hannah Higley

children

• Joseph Trumbull (1737–1778), General in the Continental Army
• Jonathan Trumbull Jr. (1740-1809), also Connecticut Governor 1798-1809
• Faith Trumbull (1743–1775), married the Brigade General Jedidiah Huntington (1743–1818)
• Mary Trumbull (1745–1831) married William Williams , one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence
• David Trumbull (1751–1822) helped his father get goods
• John Trumbull (1756–1843), famous painter during the Revolutionary War

literature

• Richard Buel, Jr .: Dear Liberty: Connecticut's Mobilization for the Revolutionary War. Wesleyan University Press, Middleton, CT 1980.
• David M. Roth: Connecticut's War Governor: Jonathan Trumbull . Pequot Press, Chester, CT 1974.
• Isaac W. Stuart: Life of Jonathan Trumbull, Sen., Governor of Connecticut. Crocker and Brewster, Boston 1859.
• Glenn Weaver: Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut's Merchant Magistrate, 1710–1785. Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford 1956.
• Oscar illustrator: Connecticut's Years of Controversy, 1750–1776. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1949.
• Trumbull, Jonathan . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 6 : Sunderland - Zurita . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1889, p. 168 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Trumbull, Jonathan . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 27 : Tonalite - Vesuvius . London 1911, p. 324 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

• Biography of Jonathan Trumbull sr. (English)
• Jonathan Trumbull in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• Trumbull in the NGA

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Archive link ( Memento of the original dated December 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.