Jay was born on January 24, 1776, in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, the eldest child of John Jay and the brother of William Jay. His mother was Sarah Van Brugh Livingston, daughter of William Livingston, later governor of New Jersey, at whose residence, "Liberty Hall, " Elizabeth Town, Peter was born and with whom he lived during his childhood years.
Jay attended school in his native town and also at Poughkeepsie, New York, and in 1790 entered Columbia College, where his father had preceded him, graduating in 1794.
The appointment, in the year of his graduation, of his father as special envoy to Great Britain, gave Jay an opportunity to visit that country as the envoy's secretary, to meet such celebrities as Pitt, Fox, Lord Grenville, and Lord Mansfield, to watch Erskine in a trial at Old Bailey, and to see Kemble and Mrs. Siddons at Drury Lane in The Merchant of Venice. Returning to New York after his father's negotiation of the treaty, he studied law with his cousin, Peter Jay Munro, with whom, upon his admission to the bar in 1797, he formed a partnership, and he ultimately built up a large and lucrative practice.
In the autumn of 1802, on account of pulmonary trouble, Jay again went abroad, this time to southern Europe. Happening to be in Paris when the Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed, he was entrusted with the transmission not only of that document but of Napoleon's order to evacuate the territory. On his way back he visited La Rochelle, the home of his Huguenot ancestors, who, he found, were remembered, and in his diary he deplores the decline of that once prosperous port. On the voyage across the Atlantic his ship was stopped several times by British frigates, but finally, after nearly forty days, he arrived in New York with the precious documents. He was a Federalist in his early years and always remained one at heart; in New York politics he was anti-Clintonian.
He was nominated for Congress in 1812 by the "Peace and Commerce" party, but his election was declared void and another contest the following year resulted in his defeat by a narrow margin. He was nevertheless elected to the state Assembly in 1816 as a Federal Republican and supported legislation for the Erie Canal and the abolition of slavery in New York. In 1820 he was appointed by Governor Clinton, though a political opponent, recorder of New York City, holding the office for a year only, but receiving a testimonial from the bar. In 1821 he was a member of the convention which framed New York's revolutionary constitution. In 1833 he served as one of the commissioners who fixed the boundary between New York and New Jersey. In 1840 he became president of the New York State Historical Society and was instrumental in establishing it in a permanent home. Jay died on February 20, 1843, in New York.
Jay was a prominent member of the Episcopal Church and served it in various capacities. He defended, unsuccessfully, those charged with causing a riot during the Columbia College Commencement exercises at Trinity Church in 1811. From 1812 to 1817 and again in 1823 he was a trustee of the college.
Jay served as president of the New York Hospital (1827-1833) and president of the New York State Historical Society (1840).
Quotes from others about the person
Philip Hone described Jay as "always wise, always honest, but sometimes a little prejudiced. "
On July 29, 1807, Jay was married to Mary Rutherfurd Clarkson, daughter of Gen. Matthew Clarkson of New York City, and they had eight children.
He was an American statesman, Patriot, diplomat, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, negotiator and signatory of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, second Governor of New York, and the first Chief Justice of the United States (1789-1795).
He was an English nonconformist divine who preached for sixty years at Argyle Chapel in Bath.
He was an American physician and notable conchologist.
