Jonathan Sewall

Jonathan Sewall (1728 – September 27 1796) was the last British attorney general of Massachusetts.

He was born in Boston in 1728. Sewall, a Harvard graduate, served as attorney general of Massachusetts from 1767 to 1775. In 1759 he became a very close friend and patron of John Adams, the future 2nd President of the United States. At the urging of Governor Francis Bernard, Sewall offered Adams the position of Advocate General in the Admiralty Court. Adams declined. A devout Loyalist, he took his family to England in 1775 after a mob stormed the family home in Cambridge. Adams in his diary grieved his best friend in the world had become his implacable enemy. While Adams was assigned to London as an envoy in 1785, he looked up his old friend and they had a two hour meeting. Both men were entrenched in their own ideas and no reconciliation was possible. Adams considered Sewall a casualty of the war.

Sewall later served as a judge in the Vice Admiralty Court of Nova Scotia. He died in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1796.

His son Jonathan later served as Chief Justice of Lower Canada and his son Stephen served as solicitor general for Lower Canada.

References

* "Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist", Carol Berkin. Columbia University Press (1974) ISBN 0-595-00020-7