Jeremiah Dummer was a significant colonial figure for New England. He also played a significant role in the formation of Yale College.
Background
Jeremiah Dummer was born in 1679 in Boston. He was the son of Jeremiah Dummer, by his wife, Anna Atwater. Jeremiah second was the younger brother of William, lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts 1716-30, who married a daughter of Governor Dudley.
Education
Dummer attended Harvard, graduating in 1699, and then went to Utrecht where he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1703.
Career
Dummer returned to Massachusetts after his studies and took part in the Harvard Commencement of 1704 where he is said to have spoken fluently in Latin. After considering the ministry as a career, he decided to enter business, and finding no opening in Boston, went to England and never returned. In England, he made prominent friends and was employed by Lord Bolingbroke in secret negotiations. He received assurances of promotion to an office of honor and profit, but the death of Queen Anne in 1714 ruined that hope.
Meanwhile, he had done well and had become a prominent lawyer and a man of fashion. In 1710, Sir Henry Ashurst, the Massachusetts colonial agent, died, and his brother declined to accept the proffered post. He recommended that the General Court choose Dummer who, in spite of Governor Dudley's opposition, received the appointment.
Dummer was genuinely interested in New England and in 1711 wrote to the Reverend Pierpont of Connecticut that a Mr. Yale, formerly governor of Fort George in India, had returned with a prodigious estateand the idea of bestowing some of it on a college at Oxford, as he had no son. Dummer added that he was trying to get him to give some of it to a college in New England and that he would "take care to press it home. " He succeeded, and Yale's benefactions to the college now bearing his name began.
Dummer's interest continued and in 1714 he sent over some seven hundred or a thousand books he had collected for the new institution. Indeed, it was said that he tried, later, to divert some of Thomas Hollis's interest in Harvard College to its Connecticut rival.
Meanwhile, in 1712, he had been appointed colonial agent for Connecticut. In that year, he published in London, A Letter to a Noble Lord, concerning the Late Expedition to Canada, in which he set forth the efforts made by Massachusetts in the unfortunate Canadian expedition, to counterbalance the charges made by its incompetent commander, Sir Hovenden Walker, who claimed that its failure was due to the lack of cooperation by the colonies.
Dummer is said to have unsuccessfully solicited for himself the post of judge-advocate on the expedition.
Although he did not return to New England, he appears to have still had property there, as in 1713 he was one of the absentee proprietors of the town of Leicester, Massachusetts.
In 1715, when an attack was being made in Parliament on the colonial charters, Dummer wrote his Defence of the New England Charters. He claimed that these charters had a higher validity than those of corporations in England, as they had been granted in consideration of services to be performed; and that the colonial governments had never forfeited them by any misdoing; also that if there were any ground for forfeiture it would not be to the interest of the crown to resume them; and any legal action should be taken by the lower courts and not by Parliament.
Dummer was much opposed to the appointment of Elizeus Burges as governor of Massachusetts, and was mainly instrumental in having him replaced by Shute. When Shute returned to England and presented his Memorial of grievances, the Massachusetts Assembly forced the appointment of Elisha Cooke as temporary agent to join Dummer in England in refuting the charges. Dummer felt that the Massachusetts government was going too far for its own good in the countercharges made against Shute and that, as a result, it would appear in England as though in reality Massachusetts wanted no English governor at all. He did not hesitate to tell the Assembly so and, as a consequence, in 1721 that body, against the protest of the Council, dismissed him from his agency. In 1730 he was similarly and very curtly dismissed by Connecticut. He died unmarried, at Plaistow, England, and was buried at West Ham, Essex.
Religion
Dummer was a skeptic in religion.
Personality
Jeremiah Dummmer is said to have had a "vollible tongue, " and was not always in sympathy with the extreme radicalism of the colonial Assemblies.