Nicholas Ridgely was an American legislator and jurist.
Background
Nicholas Ridgely was born on September 30, 1762 in Dover, Delaware, the eldest son of Dr. Charles Greenberry Ridgely by his first wife. His mother, Mary, according to her husband's note in the Ridgely family Bible (post), was the daughter of Abraham Wynkoop of Sussex County, Delaware; but in Richard Wynkoop's Wynkoop Genealogy, it is made to appear that she was the daughter of Wynkoop's wife, Mary Dyer, by a former marriage, to Nicholas Hammond. Ridgely's paternal grandfather, Nicholas Ridgely, who moved to Dover from Maryland and served Kent County for over a decade as prothonotary and clerk of the peace, was the grandson of Col. Henry Ridgeley (sic) who settled in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, in 1659.
Education
Nicholas, after securing a liberal education, studied law under Robert Goldsborough of Cambridge, Maryland.
Career
Having taken up the practice of his profession in his native town, he soon assumed a leading position at the Delaware bar. He early participated in politics of his state and before he reached the age of twenty-five was elected a delegate from Kent County to the state convention of 1787 which ratified the Federal Constitution.
In 1788, 1789, and 1790 he was elected a member of the Legislative Council from Kent County, and thus participated in the election of the first United States senators from Delaware and the first presidential electors.
In 1791 his superior legal talents brought him appointment as state attorney-general, which position he held for a decade, and in the same year he was elected a delegate for Kent County to the second state constitutional convention, which was held in Dover in November 1791 and continued into the following year.
Under the second constitution, which went into effect in 1792, Ridgely was elected a member of the first state House of Representatives, and was later reëlected to that body five times, in 1796, 1797, 1799, 1800, and 1801. At the first session of the legislature in January 1802, he resigned his seat because he had been appointed chancellor of Delaware to succeed the first chancellor, William Killen.
Ridgely was a communicant of Christ Episcopal Church in Dover for many years, was elected senior warden in 1786, and in June of that year was a deputy to the second session (Philadelphia) of the convention which organized the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. He was buried in Christ Churchyard.
Achievements
Connections
Ridgely was married, May 20, 1806, to Mary Brereton, daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Brereton of Sussex County, Del. She survived him twenty-two years, dying in Dover, July 28, 1852. There were no children.