Background
Jesse Root was born at Coventry, Connecticut, United States, the eighth and youngest child of Ebenezer and Sarah (Strong) Root and the descendant of Thomas Roote or Root who emigrated from England about 1637 and settled in Hartford.
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Jesse Root was born at Coventry, Connecticut, United States, the eighth and youngest child of Ebenezer and Sarah (Strong) Root and the descendant of Thomas Roote or Root who emigrated from England about 1637 and settled in Hartford.
The boy was educated in the common school of Coventry and, showing himself able and industrious, continued to college. In 1756 he graduated from Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey. He had returned to Connecticut to study theology with the Reverend Samuel Lockwood of Andover and was licensed to preach by the Hartford south association on March 29, 1757.
On account of the death of his brother in 1758 and of the illness of his father, who died in 1760, he did not long continue his ministerial work. Furthermore, he was not at all sure that he was fitted for it, and when at the time of the settlement of his father's estate Judge Trumbull suggested that he might make a good lawyer, he found that others, notably Judge Eliphalet Dyer of Windham, agreed with the suggestion. Thus in February 1763 he was admitted to the bar at Windham but chose Hartford in which to practise. For the next thirty-four years he was continually in the public service and soon found opportunity to defend the colonies with both tongue and pen as a member of the Council of Safety. On December 30, 1776, he received a captain's commission from Governor Trumbull and three days later set out for the army at Peekskill with a company of volunteers he had raised in Hartford. He soon rose in rank to be lieutenant-colonel and then adjutant-general. In December 1778 he presented his credentials in the Continental Congress and sat in that body until the end of 1782. From 1780 to 1789 he was a member of the state Council, the upper house of the legislature under the old constitution, and was for a time its chairman. In 1789 he was appointed assistant judge of the superior court and in 1798 succeeded to the duties of chief justice. In the same year he published Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Superior Court and Supreme Court of Errors 1789 to 1793 and added a second volume in 1802. In 1807 he returned to private life, believing that men of high office should in the public interest retire while at the height of their powers. For two years, 1807 and 1808, however, he was a member of the legislature, and in 1808 a presidential elector. Likewise in 1818 he was a member of the convention to frame the new state constitution; yet he esteemed it no less an honor to hold the office of school visitor in his own town of Coventry and filled it punctiliously to the last days of his life.
Member of the Continental Congress, 1778-83
He had nine children, all born in Coventry, a wealth of friends, and was beloved and respected for his charity and public works. In stature he was tall, with an easy yet dignified manner. He was characteristically punctual in all business and presided on the bench with both firmness and complaisance.
On May 18, 1758, he was married to Mary Banks of Newark, New Jersey, United States. They had nine children. He died at his home in Coventry after a brief illness