John Read

Background

John Read was a native of Fairfield, Connecticut, the son of William and Deborah (Baldwin) Read and a descendant of early settlers in that colony.

Education

He matriculated at Harvard College in 1692, graduated five years later.

Career

He entered the ministry, preaching at Waterbury, East Hartford, and Stratford during the years from 1698 to 1706. It was at this time that he was drawn into protracted litigation over valuable lands on the Housatonic River in New Milford, appearing as attorney in his own defense against suits for ejectment.

In a petition to the General Court in 1710, he stated: "Sixteen times have I been to Court about it, ever gaining till ye last Courts Assistants wherein I finally lost; and am utterly discouraged and broken - finding two things, 16t that I am not able to maintain suits forever, and that Indian titles are grown into utter contempt, which things make me weary of the world". This rather expensive legal education appears to have sufficed to lure him professionally from the pulpit into the law courts.

Although he was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1708, his famous career was begun inauspiciously, for at the very next term he was admonished by the court for contempt and forbidden to plead until he should make acceptable acknowledgment, which he did in the course of the year.

In 1712 he was appointed attorney for the Crown and appeared in this capacity in numerous lawsuits for several years thereafter, but his principal interest at this time appears to have been centered in real-estate activities directed from his manor-house in Lonetown. He was one of the purchasers of the "Equivalent Lands" given by Massachusetts to Connecticut in settlement of a boundary question, and he served in 1719-20 as commissioner in boundary disputes with New York and with Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. In 1721 he moved to Boston, and in the same year he was elected attorney-general, a selection which was promptly vetoed by Governor Shute.

Owing to the governor's contention that appointment to this office belonged to his prerogative, Read, though repeatedly elected by the legislature, was not permitted to serve except in the years 1723, 1726, and 1734. During this period he took an active part in the political life of Boston. Before his time the political rôle of the professional lawyer had been negligible, and, according to Thomas Hutchinson, Read's election to the General Court in 1738 as a representative of Boston was the first occasion under the second charter that that town was represented by a lawyer.

Read was in great public demand thereafter, serving in 1741 and 1742 on the Governor's Council, where, through his influence, the custom of renewing the commission of judges upon the appointment of a new governor was suspended, and a fiscal pool to turn the tide of specie was adopted.

Notable among these were Banister vs. Cunningham, in which, in a learned opinion, Read buttressed his arguments in behalf of divisible descent by citing the analogies of the English customs of gavelkind and borough English, and Rex vs. Checkley, the famous prosecution for libel upon the Congregational Church, in the course of which Read argued that the libelous character of the publication should be determined by the jury and not by the court.

He also appeared in 1727 in behalf of the Anglican ministers in Boston in urging their claim to membership on the Board of Overseers of Harvard College, and on frequent occasions appeared in behalf of the city of Boston and of the province of Massachusetts in boundary disputes.

Achievements

• Read was one of the outstanding colonial lawyers of the first half of the eighteenth century, and he actively participated as counsel in some of the leading cases of his generation. No other single individual seems to have had as great an influence on the development of legal practices in New England in the first half of the eighteenth Century. To him has been attributed, in conjunction with Paul Dudley, the introduction of special pleading. He reduced the obscure and redundant phraseology of English deeds to their modern simplified forms. He is also generally credited with the revolutionary legal innovation of conveying the property of a married woman by the simple procedure of a joint deed executed by husband and wife. His legal forms have served as models of pleading for such eminent leaders of the bar as Story, Parsons, and Stearns. Read always maintained extensive real-estate interests, among the most notable in his later life being the purchase at auction of the township, now known as Charlemont, then called Boston Plantation No. I. In the midst of his manifold activities, he found time to write a small Latin grammar which was published in 1736.

Personality

Brilliant, witty, and benevolent, he was an eccentric genius, to whom tradition has often assigned the rôle of a colonial Haroun-Al-Raschid, who, traveling incognito, would often volunteer his legal services for the defenseless.

Connections

His wife was Ruth Talcott, daughter of Col. John Talcott of Hartford and half-sister of Gov. Joseph Talcott. They had several children.

Father:

William Read

Mother:

Deborah (Baldwin) Read

Spouse:

Ruth Talcott