Jonathan Belcher was a merchant, politician, and slave trader from colonial Massachusetts who served as both governor of Massachusetts Bay and governor of New Hampshire from 1730 to 1741 and governor of New Jersey from 1747 to 1757.
61 Facts About Jonathan Belcher
2.
Jonathan Belcher was instrumental in promoting Samuel Shute as governor of Massachusetts in 1715, and sat on the colony's council, but became disenchanted with Shute over time and eventually joined the populist faction of Elisha Cooke Jr.
3.
Jonathan Belcher's opponents, led by William Shirley and Samuel Waldo, eventually convinced the Board of Trade to replace Belcher, and the border dispute was resolved in New Hampshire's favor.
4.
Jonathan Belcher was appointed governor of New Jersey in 1747 with support from its Quaker community.
5.
Jonathan Belcher unsuccessfully attempted to mediate the partisan conflicts between New Jersey's Quakers and wealthy landowners, and promoted the establishment of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.
6.
The fifth of seven children, his father Andrew was a merchant who was one of the first slave traders in colonial New England, and his mother, Sarah Jonathan Belcher, was the daughter of a politically well connected Connecticut merchant and Indian trader.
7.
Jonathan Belcher's mother died when he was seven, and his father sent him to live with relatives in the country while he expanded his trading business.
8.
Andrew Jonathan Belcher was highly successful in trade, although some of it was in violation of the Navigation Acts, and some was supposedly conducted with pirates.
9.
Jonathan Belcher graduated from Harvard at the age of 17, and then entered into his father's business.
10.
Jonathan Belcher eventually came to see himself as a defender of that faith practice, which permeated his political life.
11.
Jonathan Belcher was involved in the management of the family's trading activities.
12.
The family's warehouses were the targets of mob action, and Jonathan Belcher was beaten by a mob on one occasion.
13.
Jonathan Belcher is known to have owned slaves as well, ordering them from his friend, Isaac Royall Sr.
14.
Jonathan Belcher presented an enslaved Indian to Electress Sophia on his second visit to Hanover in 1708.
15.
When Connecticut auctioned off these "Equivalent Lands" in 1716, Jonathan Belcher was one of the buyers.
16.
Jonathan Belcher inherited property from his father that was located in what is Wallingford and Meriden, Connecticut.
17.
Jonathan Belcher spent a significant amount of money in an unsuccessful attempt to profitably mine the property for metal ores, particularly copper.
18.
In 1714 Jonathan Belcher expanded his mining interests, acquiring a stake in a mine in Simsbury.
19.
Dummer and Jonathan Belcher were then instrumental in promoting Samuel Shute as an alternative to Burges, believing among other things that he was likely to be well received in New England because he was from a prominent Dissenting family.
20.
Jonathan Belcher signaled his partisanship by first taking up residence with Paul Dudley, son of the last-appointed governor Joseph Dudley and a land bank opponent, rather than Acting Governor William Tailer.
21.
Jonathan Belcher was elected to the Massachusetts Governor's Council in 1718.
22.
Jonathan Belcher was consequently on and off the council several times, blocked by the efforts of populist leader Elisha Cooke Jr.
23.
Jonathan Belcher became increasingly unhappy that Paul Dudley wielded more influence than he did during the administration of William Dummer that followed.
24.
When William Burnet arrived in 1728 as governor Jonathan Belcher was unexpectedly elected moderator of Boston's town meeting in an election apparently engineered by Cooke.
25.
In Burnet's dispute with the assembly over his salary, Cooke and Jonathan Belcher made common cause over the issue.
26.
Jonathan Belcher was elected by the assembly as an agent to London to explain the colonial position on the governor's salary, and Cooke helped raise the funds needed for the trip.
27.
In 1729, while Jonathan Belcher was in London, news arrived that Governor Burnet had died quite suddenly.
28.
Jonathan Belcher lobbied for and was awarded the job of governor of both Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
29.
Jonathan Belcher was well received in Massachusetts upon his arrival in 1731, but immediately began to purge opponents and their supporters from positions over which he had control.
30.
One early issue Jonathan Belcher took on was that of defending the established church.
31.
Jonathan Belcher was willing to countenance such an exemption for the relatively modest number of Quakers, but refused to support one for the more numerous and politically connected Anglicans until it was apparent in 1735 that he would be instructed to do so.
32.
In 1735, Jonathan Belcher presided over a meeting in Deerfield at which the Stockbridge Indians agreed to accept Congregationalist missionaries and authorized the erection of a mission house.
33.
Jonathan Belcher learned that Lieutenant Governor John Wentworth had offered his support to Samuel Shute when the governorship became available, and consequently turned on the entire Wentworth clan in retaliation.
34.
Jonathan Belcher took on as an ally and confidant Richard Waldron, a bitter opponent of the Wentworths and a relative by marriage.
35.
Jonathan Belcher made repeated unsuccessful attempts to get sympathetic assemblies, calling for elections ten times during his tenure.
36.
Jonathan Belcher took all steps possible to ensure Dunbar could not exercise any significant powers, refusing to seat him on the council, and making frequent trips from Boston to Portsmouth to exercise his authority personally.
37.
Jonathan Belcher was unwilling to resolve longstanding boundary disputes between New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
38.
Jonathan Belcher had been ordered to effect the retirement of a large amount of Massachusetts paper currency by 1741, and the legislation to accomplish this was rejected by the Board of Trade, leading to the introduction of competing banking proposals in the province.
39.
The proposals polarized the Massachusetts political establishment, and Jonathan Belcher was unable to take sides for fear of alienating supporters on either side.
40.
Jonathan Belcher instead sought without success to browbeat the assembly into passing a currency retirement scheme acceptable to London.
41.
Jonathan Belcher, who was expected to raise about 400 men, promised to raise 1,000, but was only able to raise about 500 in Massachusetts, and not even the 100 he had promised from New Hampshire.
42.
The exact reasons for Jonathan Belcher's dismissal have been a recurring subject of scholarly interest, due to the many colonial, imperial, and political factors at play.
43.
Shirley consequently engaged in recruiting, principally outside Massachusetts, and deluged Newcastle with documentation of his successes while Jonathan Belcher was preoccupied with the banking crisis.
44.
The Board of Trade then apparently decided, based on the weight of the evidence, that Jonathan Belcher needed to be replaced.
45.
Jonathan Belcher had expected to lose the New Hampshire governorship, but was shocked when news of Shirley's commissioning arrived.
46.
Since New Jersey had a strong Quaker political establishment, Jonathan Belcher immediately began mobilizing supporters in the London Quaker community to assist in securing the post.
47.
Jonathan Belcher served as governor of New Jersey from 1747 until his death in 1757.
48.
Elizabethtown, near New York, was heavily populated by evangelical Christians, among them Reverend Aaron Burr, and Jonathan Belcher found himself welcome there.
49.
Jonathan Belcher regularly attended services there, and was particularly influenced by preachers including George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards, leaders of the Great Awakening with whom he corresponded.
50.
Jonathan Belcher believed that the land issues should be resolved by negotiation between the parties, and sought to maintain a position as a neutral arbiter of the dispute.
51.
One controversial matter that Jonathan Belcher was able to finesse was the establishment of the College of New Jersey.
52.
The college was proposed by New Jersey's evangelical Presbyterians, with whom Jonathan Belcher found religious agreement.
53.
The college's opponents pressured Jonathan Belcher to withdraw the charter; he instead adopted the college as a cause to support, and expanded its board to include a diversity of religious views.
54.
Jonathan Belcher supported the establishment of the college's library, to which he bequeathed his personal library.
55.
In 1748, Belcher issued a second Charter to the College of New Jersey, since the validity of the initial charter, which was granted in 1746 by Acting Governor Jonathan Dickinson, came under question.
56.
The assembly objected to increased funding of the militia in 1755 because Jonathan Belcher refused to authorize the emission of additional paper currency.
57.
For much of his New Jersey administration Jonathan Belcher was ill, suffering from a type of progressive paralytic disorder.
58.
Belcher's youngest son Jonathan was appointed as Chief Justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court and as Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia.
59.
Jonathan Belcher had no children with his second wife Louise, although he did prevail on his son Andrew to marry her daughter from her first marriage.
60.
Jonathan Belcher was the uncle of future Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver and Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature Chief Justice Peter Oliver, and was the great-grandfather of British Admiral Edward Jonathan Belcher.
61.
The body of Judge Jonathan Belcher Remington was disinterred and placed by his side.