Jonathan D. Sergeant (422)

Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant (1746–8 October 1793) was a lawyer, politician, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1784. Born in Newark, New Jersey, Sergeant earned a bachelor’s from Princeton (1762), and the College of Philadelphia (1763), before studying law under a Princeton lawyer. Admitted to the bar in 1767, he spent his early career opposing British suppression, namely during the Stamp Act controversy. He became clerk of the New Jersey Convention (1774), then secretary of Continental Congress, juggling his duties there with those in the New Jersey Provincial Congress, where he led the committee responsible for drafting a constitution for the state (1776). Sergeant moved to Philadelphia after Hessian forces burned down his residence in Princeton, then served as attorney-general for Pennsylvania (1777-1780), thereby becoming an ex officio trustee of the University of the state of Pennsylvania. He received official election as trustee five years later and remained in that position when the University merged with the College of Philadelphia, officially becoming Pennsylvania University in 1792. In 1780, Sergeant retired as state-attorney and resumed his private legal practice, partaking in major trials such as the Pennsylvania-Connecticut dispute (1782), and the defense of anti-federalist Eleazar Oswald (1788). In 1787, he married his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of APS Member David Rittenhouse. Sergeant died of yellow fever when the disease swept Philadelphia in 1793.