American jurist, born in Boston, MA, on the 18th of July 1757; died in Brattleboro, VT, on the 16th of August 1826. He graduated from Harvard (1776) and studied law in John Adams’s office. Served as a volunteer (1785–86); settled as a lawyer in Guilford, VT (1790); made a justice of the supreme court of Vermont (1794), and its chief justice (1800). In 1809 he published two volumes of Vermont court cases. He did also considerable literary work, poems, songs, newspaper articles, stories and plays. His drama, The Contrast, was the first American play ever acted on a regular stage by professional actors (1786). The Algerine Captive, a fictitious autobiography, has been often republished since 1799, when it first came out.
