[Americana] [Declaration of Independence] Stockton, Richard Autograph Document, signed

Morris County, New Jersey, after 1761. One sheet, 11 1/8 x 7 1/4 in. (282 x 184 mm). Autograph legal document on two pages, signed twice by Signer of the Declaration of Independence from New Jersey, Richard Stockton, an attorney representing Richard Cary and Edmund Trowbridge, executors of the estate of John Alford, in their lawsuit with John Brookfield, of Morris County, New Jersey, over a debt of "one hundred & sixty Pounds Sterling money of Great Britain which from them he unjustly retains..."; lengthy passage on verso entirely in Stockton's hand concerning the lawsuit's debt obligation, endorsed at bottom of same by Jacob Moor. Trimmed along top edge, shaving some words and letters; creasing from old folds, small separations along same; open tear at center fold in right edge. In mat with portrait of Stockton, and in frame, 18 3/8 x 23 in. (467 x 584 mm).

Richard Stockton was born near Princeton, New Jersey on October 1, 1730. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1748, and then studied law with David Ogden of Newark, New Jersey. In the years leading up to the American Revolution he became one of the most eminent lawyers in the North American colonies, and operated one of the colonies' largest practices. In 1765 he was appointed to the Royal Council of New Jersey, and in 1774 he was appointed Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey. In 1776 he and Dr. John Witherspoon were elected to the Second Continental Congress, and both signed the Declaration of Independence. When the war began he was appointed to various committees supporting the war effort, and on December 2, 1776, while on return from a fact finding mission in New York, he was captured by Loyalists in Hopewell, New Jersey. He was jailed in Provost Prison in New York, where he was tortured and starved, and his estate and library--one of the finest in the colonies--was burned by the British. Broken by his maltreatment, he renounced American independence as a condition of parole a few months later. Following his release his health was ruined and in February 1777 he resigned from the Continental Congress. After rumors of the circumstances of his release and loyalty began to circulate, he was called before the New Jersey Council of Safety and requested to sign an oath of allegiance to the Continental Congress, which he did. In 1779, after two years of recovery, Stockton attempted to relaunch his law practice, but soon developed an aggressive cancer, and died in 1781 at the age of 51.

John Alford (1686-1761) served on the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and bequeathed a large part of his estate to support the propagation of the Gospel among Native Americans and for "pious and charitable uses" at Harvard College and the College of New Jersey. Alford's estate was seemingly in legal limbo, as deduced from this document, for over two decades, and Cary and Trowbridge, his executors, did not settle it until the end of the 1780s.

A very rare autograph document from one of the most unobtainable Signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Provenance

From the autograph collection of B. Harold Smick, Jr. (1925-2022) of Salem, New Jersey