George Read
GEORGE READ was born in Maryland, in the year 1734. Being designed by his parents for one of the learned professions, he was placed at a seminary at Chester, Pennsylvania. Having there acquired the rudiments of the languages, he was transferred to the care of the accomplished Dr. Allison, with whom he remained until his seventeenth year. He was then placed in the office of John Morland, Es<??>a lawyer in the city of Philadelphia, for the purpose of fitting himself for the legal profession.
In 1753, at the age of nineteen years, Mr. Read was admitted to the bar. In the year following, he commenced the practice of the law, in the town of Newcastle. In 1763, he was appointed Attorney General of the three lower counties on the Delaware. In the year 1765, Mr. Read was elected a representative from New-castle county to the General Assembly of Delaware, a post which he occupied for twelve years.
On the 1st of August, 1774, Mr. Read was chosen a delegate from Delaware to the Continental Congress. To this station he was annually re-elected, during the whole revolutionary war. Mr. Read did not vote for the Declaration of Independence. But when, at length, the measure had received the sanction of the great national council, and the time arrived for signing the instrument, Mr. Read affixed his signature to it, with all the cordiality of those who had voted in its favor.
Mr. Read was president of the Convention which formed the first Constitution of the State of Delaware. In 1782, he accepted the appointment of Judge of the Court of Appeals, in admiralty cases, an office which he held until the abolition of the court. In 1787, he represented the State of Delaware in the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, under which he was immediately chosen a member of the Senate. The duties of this exalted station he discharged till 1793, when he accepted of a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of Delaware, as Chief Justice. He died in this office, in the autumn of 1798.
The legal attainments of Mr. Read were extensive; and his decisions are still respected as precedents of no slight authority. In private life he was esteemed for an expanded benevolence to all around him.