NorthShore Slavery

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Essex County Massachusetts Freedom Case Participants 1760 - 1783

Edmund Trowbridge Esq. (1709-1793)

Cambridge

Biography: EDMUND TROWBRIDGE (1709-1793). Harvard 1728. Used the name "Goffe" until well into middle life, after his uncle and guardian, Col. Edmund Goffe. Admitted attorney, SCJ, July 1732; barrister, Aug. 1762. Practiced primarily in Middlesex Co. Considered the most scholarly lawyer and judge of the pre-Revolutionary period. Many of his students went on to great success at the bar. Appointed Justice of the Peace and of the Quorum, 1739. Attorney General, 1749-1767. Represented Cambridge in the House, 1750-1752, 1755, 1763. Member of the Council, 1764-1766, where he supported Crown policies. Justice of Superior Court, 1767-1775, bringing to the bench legal knowledge which many of his fellow judges lacked. Pleadings and opinions in the field of real property reprinted and cited by Massachusetts lawyers into the 19th century. Renounced the royal salary grant, 1774, and thereafter remained a neutral, withdrawing from public life to devote himself to legal research and study. 8 Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates 507-520; DAB.
Adams, John, L. Kinvin Wroth, and Hiller B. Zobel. Legal Papers of John Adams. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965.

Comments:

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