Theodore Sedgwick
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Theodore Sedgwick (May 9, 1746-January 24, 1813), a Delegate, a Representative, and a Senator from Massachusetts and the fifth Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, was born in West Hartford, Connecticut.
Sedgwick attended Yale College, where he studied theology and law. He did not graduate, but went on to study law under Mark Hopkins of Great Barrington, the grandfather of Mark Hopkins, the distinguished later president of Williams College. He was admitted to the bar in 1766 and commenced practice in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; moved to Sheffield, Massachusetts; during the American Revolution served in the expedition against Canada in 1776.
Sedgwick married, April 17, 1774 (his second), Pamela Dwight, born June 26, 1753, died September 20, 1807, daughter of Brigadier General Joseph Dwight of Great Barrington and his second wife, Abigail Williams (Sargent) Dwight. Pamela was the grand-daughter of Colonel Ephraim Williams, the founder of Williams College. They had ten children of whom three died within a year of birth.[1]
A Federalist, Sedgwick's political career began in 1780 and lasted until he became a judge of the supreme court of Massachusetts in 1802, a position he held until his death in Boston, Massachusetts in 1813. He was buried in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
[edit] Mum Bett
As a lawyer, he pled the case for Elizabeth Freeman (called Mumbet) a negro slave who had fled from her master on account of cruel treatment. The court ruled that she was free, thus making this case the earliest application of the declaration of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights that "all men are born free and equal." This decision was later upheld by the state Supreme Court after Sedgwick became a justice thereof. Mumbet was so grateful that she became a member of the Sedgwick household for life and is buried in the family plot - her grave is marked by a monument beside the grave of his daughter Catharine Maria Sedgwick, the first noted female writer in the United States.[2]
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Categories: 1746 births | 1813 deaths | Continental Congressmen | Massachusetts State Senators | Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices | Members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives | Members of the United States House of Representatives from Massachusetts | Sedgwick family | Speakers of the United States House of Representatives | Stockbridge, Massachusetts | United States Senators from Massachusetts
