Robert Treat Paine (politician, 1731)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Treat Paine signature

Robert Treat Paine (born March 11, 1731 in Boston , Province of Massachusetts Bay , colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain , †  May 11, 1814 in Boston, Massachusetts , USA ) was a British - American lawyer and politician . As one of the signatories of the American Declaration of Independence for Massachusetts, he is counted among the founding fathers of the USA .

Life

Paine was born in Boston and attended the Latin School Boston Latin School . He graduated from Harvard College in 1749 , then taught and studied theology. He became a trader and traveled through the southern colonies, Spain, the Azores and England. Upon his return home, he was admitted to practice in Massachusetts in 1757 or 1759. He practiced in Portland (now Maine, but then located in Massachusetts) and later in Taunton .

In 1768 he was a delegate in the Provincial Congress, which called for a meeting in Boston and led the indictment of Captain Thomas Preston and his British soldiers after the Boston massacre of March 5, 1770.

He served in the General Court of Justice of Massachusetts from 1773 to 1774, in the Provincial Congress from 1774 to 1775, and represented Massachusetts in the Continental Congress in 1776 . He remained in Congress from 1774 to 1778, helping set the rules of debate and getting gunpowder for the upcoming war. In 1775 he signed the Palm Branch Petition , the final appeal to the king.

He was Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1777 and a member of the Executive Council in 1779, a member of the commission that drafted the Constitution in 1780 , Attorney General of Massachusetts from 1777 to 1790, and Judge of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1790 until his retirement in 1804. In 1780 he was one of the first members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . When he died in 1814 at the age of 83, he was buried on the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.

Paine is the namesake of the actor Treat Williams and one of his ancestors on his mother's side.

Web links