RICHARD STOCKTON, the son of a wealthy landowner and judge, was born in
1730 in Morven, the family estate and his lifelong home, at Princeton,
New Jersey. After a preparatory education at West Nottingham Academy,
in Rising Sun, Maryland, he graduated in 1748 from the College of New
Jersey (later Princeton University), then in Newark but relocated eight
years later at Princeton. In 1754 he completed an apprenticeship with a
Newark lawyer and joined the bar. The next year, he wed poetess Annis
Boudinot, by whom he had two sons and four daughters. By the mid-1760's
he was recognized as one of the ablest lawyers in the Middle Colonies.
Like his father a patron of the College of New Jersey, in 1766 Stockton
sailed on its behalf to Scotland to recruit the Reverend John
Witherspoon for the presidency. Aiding in this endeavor, complicated by
the opposition to Witherspoon's wife, was Benjamin Rush, a fellow
alumnus then enrolled at the University of Edinburgh. In 1768, the year
after Stockton's departure, Witherspoon finally accepted.
Stockton resumed his law practice, spending his spare hours at Morven
breeding choice cattle and horses, collecting art objects, and expanding
his library. Yet, though he had some time before expressed disinterest
in public life, in 1768 he began a 6-year term on the Executive Council
of New Jersey and then sat on the Provincial Supreme Court (1774-1776).
Stockton became associated with the Revolutionary movement during its
initial stages. In 1764 he advocated American representation in
Parliament, but during the Stamp Act crisis the next year questioned its
right to control the Colonies at all. By 1774, though dreading the
possibility of war, he was espousing colonial self-rule under the
Crown. Elected to Congress two years later, he voted for independence
and signed the Declaration of Independence. That same year he met with
defeat in a bid for the New Jersey Governorship, but rejected the chance
to become first Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court to remain in
Congress.
Late in 1776 fate turned against Stockton. In November, while
inspecting the northern Continental Army in upper New York State with
fellow Congressman George Clymer, Stockton hurried home when he learned
of the British invasion of New Jersey and removed his family to a
friend's home in Monmouth County. While he was there, Loyalists
informed the British who captured and imprisoned him under harsh
conditions at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and later in New York. A formal
remonstrance from Congress and other efforts to obtain his exchange
resulted in his release, in poor physical condition, sometime in 1777.
To add to his woes, he found that the British had pillaged and partially
burned Morven. Still and invalid, he died at Princeton in 1781 at the
age of 50. He was buried at the Stony Brook Quaker Meeting House
Cemetery.
Ferris, Robert G. Signers of the Declaration. Washington: U.S.
Government Printing, 1973. 133-135.
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