Thomas Rodney was an American politician and jurist, a Continental Congressman from Delaware. Caesar Rodney, Revolutionary President of Delaware was his brother.
Background
Thomas Rodney was born in Jones Neck in St. Jones Hundred, Kent County, Delaware, United States on 04. 06. 1744. He was was the eighth and youngest child of Caesar Rodney, the elder, and Elizabeth (Crawford) Rodney. When Thomas was about a year old his father died and his mother married Thomas Wilson. The task of educating the son fell to her and she early inculcated in the boy a taste for reading.
Career
Three years before he attained his majority, Thomas left his childhood home to live with his brother, Caesar Rodney, in order to assist him in the management of his farms, and in 1764 removed with him to Dover to assist him there in his official duties as a county officer. With the exception of two years spent in Philadelphia (1772 - 74) as a shopkeeper and two years in Wilmington, Delaware (1781 - 83) in a business partnership for the exporting of flour, he was engaged principally in farming, both as a manager of Caesar 's lands, when the latter was absent in Philadelphia on public business, and as a landowner himself. In 1770 he was appointed a justice of the peace in Kent County and in 1774 was reappointed to that position. Elected in 1775 as a member for Kent County of the colonial Assembly of the Government of the Three Lower Counties of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, he participated in the legislative steps taken to transform the colonial government into the state government of Delaware in the summer of 1776. In 1775, shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill, Thomas Rodney organized a volunteer militia force and in the same year was elected a member of the Council of Safety and of the Committee of Observation for Kent County. When in the autumn and early winter of 1776 Washington's army was retreating across New Jersey, Rodney, in command as captain of a company of Kent County militia, joined the division of General Cadwalader at Bristol, Pennsylvania, at Christmas time, and led his men in the second battle of Trenton on January 2 and in the battle of Princeton the following day. Later in the same year (1777), when General Howe's army invaded northern Delaware on its way from the Head of Elk to Philadelphia, Thomas Rodney acted as adjutant to his brother Caesar who was then in command of the Delaware militia encamped near the British posts in New Castle County. From 1778 to 1785 Thomas Rodney served his state as judge of the admiralty court, and between the years 1781 and 1788 he was elected by the General Assembly five times to membership in the Confederation Congress. Elected twice to membership in the lower house of the General Assembly (1786 and 1787), he was chosen speaker of that body in October 1787, but after serving for a few days he asked to be relieved. Appointed associate justice of the supreme court of Delaware in December 1802, he held this post until August 1803, when he resigned to accept an appointment by President Jefferson as United States judge for Mississippi Territory. He remained in this position until his death at Natchez in 1811.
Achievements
Membership
member of the Democratic-Republican Party
Connections
Rodney was married, April 8, 1771, to Elizabeth Fisher, daughter of Jabez Maud Fisher of Philadelphia. Two of their children attained maturity, one of whom was Caesar Augustus Rodney