James Duane

American Founding Father and judge

For the law professor, see James Joseph Duane . For other uses, see James Duane (disambiguation) .

James Duane (February 6, 1733 – February 1, 1797) was an American Founding Father , attorney, jurist, and American Revolutionary leader from New York . He served as a delegate to the First Continental Congress , the Second Continental Congress and the Congress of the Confederation , a New York state senator, the 45th Mayor of New York City , the 1st post-colonial Mayor of New York City and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New York . Duane was a signatory of the Continental Association and the Articles of Confederation .

Early life

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Coat of Arms of James Duane

Duane was born on February 6, 1733, in New York City, in the Province of New York , to Anthony Duane and his second wife, Althea Ketaltas. Anthony Duane was a Protestant Irishman from County Galway who first came to New York as an officer of the Royal Navy in 1698. Duane's surname is from the Irish Ó Dubhain. In 1702, Anthony Duane left the navy to marry Eva Benson, daughter of Dirck Benson, a local merchant. They had two sons, Abraham and Cornelius. Duane prospered and bought land for investment, rental, and future development. After his wife's death, Anthony married Althea Ketaltas (Hettletas), the daughter of a wealthy Dutch merchant. By the time of James' birth, his father had become a wealthy colonial settler.

Duane's mother died in 1736, and his father married a third time in 1741 to Margaret Riken (Rycken). When Anthony died in 1747, James became the ward of Robert Livingston , the 3rd Lord of Livingston Manor , where he completed his early education.

Career

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Duane completed preparatory studies and read law in 1754, with James Alexander . He had an impressive command of the law and was admitted to the bar on August 3, 1754. He maintained a private practice in New York City from 1754 to 1762, when he became a clerk of the Chancery Court of New York .

Duane was acting attorney general of the Province of New York in 1767 and a boundary commissioner in 1768 (and again in 1784), before returning to private practice in New York City in 1774 and 1775. He was a delegate to the New York Convention which ratified the United States Constitution in 1788. Duane was a member of the Federalist Party .

Law practice and other activities

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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.

By the early 1770s, his practice earned him 1,400 pounds annually. At the height of his success, Duane had a house in Manhattan, one in the country, and an estate near Schenectady , New York, of 36,000 acres (15,000 ha) and 253 tenants. He 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 also a trustee of Kings College , the precursor to Columbia University.

In 1761, Duane acquired from Gerardus Stuyvesant a farm known as Krom Mesje ("little crooked knife") in reference to a small brook that flowed into the East River . He named it "Gramercy Seat" . In addition to the farm, Duane also had a house on King Street (later changed to Pine Street). In 1765, he was granted a patent for land in Schenectady County , which became the township of Duanesburg .

With his boyhood friend James De Lancey , Duane was one of the Socialborough Proprietors, holding an area obtained by grant in 1771 and located on both sides of Otter Creek in the present towns of Pittsford and Rutland, Vermont .

American Revolution

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Duane was politically conservative. Until his marriage to Mary Livingston, he had been a member of James De Lancey 's political faction, which opposed to the Crown's policies but did not endorse the use of mob violence to protest British measures. His efforts to support resistance in New York led to his being chosen with others to represent the Province of New York at the Congressional meetings in Philadelphia. He remained active in both capacities.

Duane was a delegate to the First Continental Congress held in Philadelphia during the autumn of 1774 in reaction to the British Navy's blockade of Boston Harbor and the passage of the Intolerable Acts by Parliament in response to the December 1773 [Boston Tea Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party "Boston Tea P

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