22 Facts About James Duane

James Duane was an American Founding Father, attorney, jurist, and American Revolutionary leader from New York.

Anthony James Duane was a Protestant Irishman from County Galway who first came to New York as an officer of the Royal Navy in 1698.

In 1702, Anthony James Duane left the navy to marry Eva Benson, daughter of Dirck Benson, a local merchant.

James Duane prospered and bought land for investment, rental, and future development.

James Duane's mother died in 1736, and his father married a third time in 1741 to Margaret Riken.

James Duane maintained a private practice in New York City from 1754 to 1762, when he became a clerk of the Chancery Court of New York.

James Duane was acting attorney general of the Province of New York in 1767 and a boundary commissioner in 1768, before returning to private practice in New York City in 1774 and 1775.

James Duane was a delegate to the New York Convention which ratified the United States Constitution in 1788.

James Duane represented Trinity Church in the very protracted legal action brought by heirs of Anneke Jans, who claimed that they, and not the church, were the lawful owners of much of lower Manhattan, a tract which had been given to the church by the British crown.

At the height of his success, James Duane had a house in Manhattan, one in the country, and an estate near Schenectady, New York, of 36,000 acres and 253 tenants.

James Duane was a vestryman of Trinity Church, was appointed one of the church's nine trustees during a post-war crisis about the church's Tory leanings, and was a trustee of Kings College, the precursor to Columbia University.

In 1761, James Duane acquired from Gerardus Stuyvesant a farm known as Krom Mesje in reference to a small brook that flowed into the East River.

James Duane was one of the many who were most disposed to reconciliation with Britain and supported the Galloway Plan of Union, which was rejected by the majority of the delegates.

Alexander Hamilton, an aide to General George Washington, wrote James Duane to ask him to get Congress to expedite supplies.

James Duane was a member of the Congress of the Confederation from 1781 to 1783.

James Duane remained active as a political leader throughout the war and returned home to Gramercy Seat in 1783.

James Duane commented that his home looked "as if they had been inhabited by wild beasts".

James Duane was a member of the New York State Senate from 1782 to 1785, and from 1788 to 1790.

In 1785, James Duane was one of 32 prominent New Yorkers who met to create the New York Manumission Society, which was intended to put pressure on the state of New York to abolish slavery, as every state in the north had done except New York and New Jersey.

James Duane was chosen a member of the Annapolis Convention in 1786 but did not attend.

James Duane's great-grandchildren included Alfred Duane Pell and James Chatham Duane.

The town of Duanesburg, New York, in the western part of Schenectady County, is named for James Duane, who held most of it as an original land grant.