Jonathan Law was born in Milford, Connecticut, United States, the only son of Jonathan and Sarah (Clark) Law, and the grandson of Richard Law, an emigrant from England, who settled at Wethersfield in 1638 and in 1641 was one of the founders of Stamford, Connecticut.
Jonathan Law was graduated from Harvard in 1695 and received the degree of Master of Arts from that institution in 1729.
Jonathan applied himself to the practice of law, in which field he won a reputation for great skill and ability. He was one of the first men to be admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1708 after the passage of an act regulating attorneys. In the next year the Assembly appointed him justice of the peace and of the quorum for New Haven County. Except for one interval of two years he held judicial office continuously until he became governor in 1741, serving successively as judge of the county court, as assistant judge of the superior courts, and from 1725 to 1741, as chief judge of the superior courts, to which office Law like other deputy governors was annually appointed.
The most important case with which he was connected, as judge, as deputy governor, and as governor, was that of Clark vs. Tousey. His judgment in the case, eventually sustained by the privy council of Great Britain (1745), went far to reëstablish the validity of the Connecticut procedure with regard to intestate estates, which had been declared contrary to English law in the earlier case of Winthrop vs. Lechmere.
Law's first elective office was that of deputy to the Assembly from Milford in 1706, an office which he filled intermittently until 1717, serving occasionally as clerk or as speaker of the lower house. His continuous nomination to the magistracy from 1710 on bore fruit in his election as assistant in 1717. Thereafter he advanced rapidly in seniority until, in 1724, his name stood sixth on the lists of assistants.
On the death of Governor Gurdon Saltonstall and the advancement of Deputy-Governor Joseph Talcott to the vacancy in 1724, Law was elected deputy governor over the heads of the five senior assistants. The choice bore striking testimony to his popularity with the voters. He was annually reëlected until October 1741, when, following the death of Talcott, he was chosen governor. He continued to hold this office until his death in 1750. As a public official, he was typical of the conservative governing classes of his colony and age. Little is known of his private life and personality.
Jonathan Law had been active in the colonial government for 35 years. As his governorship covered the period of the War of the Austrian Succession, he was associated with the successful Louisbourg expedition of 1745 and the abortive Canadian expeditions of 1746 and 1747, although his rôle was that of organizer and director of Connecticut's military activities rather than that of direct participant. He was also one of the first to plant mulberry trees and introduce raising silk worms to Connecticut. Jonathan Law High School in Milford Connecticut was named in his honor.
In religious matters Law was thoroughly orthodox and showed little sympathy for the "New Lights" during the period of the Great Awakening.
Law was married five times: in 1698 to Ann Eliot; in 1704/05 to Abigail Arnold; in 1706 to Abigail Andrew; in 1726 to Mrs. Sarah Burr; and in 1730 to Eunice (Hall) Andrew. He had a number of children, seven of them sons.
