RICHARD HARISON:

FROM TORY TRAITOR TO PRESIDENTIAL APPOINTEE

As published April 2016 by www.spero.com by James M. Thunder* *A Washington, D.C., attorney. This essay incorporates, with permission, material from K. Chris Todd, ed., 225 Years (1789-2014): The United Sates Attorneys for the Southern District of New York (2014), to which the author was a principal contributor. In 1778, New York lawyer Richard Harison refused allegiance to the United States and he was suspended from the New York bar. April 21 marks the 230th anniversary of Richard Harison’s readmission to the bar in 1786. Just three years later, on September 26, 1789, President George Washington issued a commission to him formally making him the first United States Attorney for the District of New York.

New York currently consists of four federal districts – with a district court and a district attorney in each. In 1789, it was a single district. It would be a lucrative post for a century since the incumbent would receive commissions from work related to taxes on imports at the Port of New York, and the incumbent could practice privately at the same time. And this post was given to a former traitor! -- albeit he did not not bear arms against the United States.

Before we get to a biography of Harison, let’s examine President Washington’s

appointments to determine if the appointment of a former Tory was unusual or not. For this exercise, what is important is the nomination by Washington since some individuals would decline to serve after nomination or even after Senate confirmation. My conclusion: Among Washington’s nearly 100 nominations for Cabinet members (11), ambassadors (at least 12), judgeships (38), and United States attorneys (36, not counting two who were later nominated by Washington for judgeships), there were only two nominees who were former Tories: Richard Harison and William Drayton, Sr. (1732-1790).

First an overview of President Washington’s appointment power. Washington’s

appointments under the new U.S. Constitution consisted of a handful of Cabinet members and a handful of ambassadors (in the age of empire, there were hardly 190 countries like there are today). The Judiciary Act of 1789 was signed into law by President Washington on September 24, 1789. It created the office of Attorney General and provided for six Supreme Court justices and 13 judicial districts among the 11 states. (Massachusetts had two: Massachusetts and Maine; Virginia had two: Virginia and Kentucky. North Carolina and Rhode Island were added in 1790.) Each judicial district had a district judge, United States attorney, and a U.S. marshal. Other presidential appointments included military and naval officers, port collectors, and surveyors.

Now we can turn to particular appointments. After Congress established “departments” by

various statutes, Washington nominated, in the course of his two terms, three as Secretary of State: Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Randolph and Thomas Pickering; two as Secretary of the Treasury: Alexander Hamilton and Oliver Wolcott, Jr.; three as Secretary of War: Henry Knox, Timothy Pickering, and James McHenry; and three as Attorney General: Edmund Randolph, William Bradford, and Charles Lee. He also appointed three, Samuel Osgood, Timothy Pickering, and Joseph Habersham, as Postmaster Generals. None of these 11 men had been Tories. Au contraire! Most were military veterans.

As ambassadors, Washington nominated four, William Livingston (who declined), John

Rutledge (who declined), William Short, and John Quincy Adams, to the Netherlands; two, Thomas Pinckney and Rufus King, to the United Kingdom; four, William Short, Gouverneur Morris, James Monroe and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, to France; three, William Carmichael, William Short, and David Humphreys, to Spain; and three, David Humphreys, John Quincy Adams, and William L. Smith to Portugal. There were no ambassadors to Russia, Prussia, China, or Japan during Washington’s tenure. There were ambassadors to other countries, but at least with respect to these 12 Americans sent to five countries, none were former Tories.

Washington nominated 11 individuals over his two terms to the U.S. Supreme Court. One

of them (William H. Harrison) declined. Two of them, including William H. Harrison, were military veterans. Ten of them had been politically active patriots during the Revolution by which I mean they served in state government – in the executive branch, often as governor (or “president”), or in the legislature, or in the Continental Congress. None of these were former Tories.

Washington nominated 27 individuals to serve as federal district judges. Eleven of these

were military veterans. Of these eleven, at least four had seen combat (David Brearley, John Sullivan) and two of the four had been wounded and were held as prisoners of war (John Stokes, Robert Troup1). The last point is important because many more patriots died as prisoners than in combat. Nineteen of the 27 were politically active patriots (and there is overlap of course with those who had served in the military). I do not count include as “politically active” individuals who were in the private practice of law even if appearing before courts of the patriot state (not colonial) governments.

Six of the 27 were neither military veterans nor politically active during the Revolution.

Had they been Tories? Two were likely too young to have served (but see the example of Andrew Jackson below): Joseph Clay, Jr. was born in 1764. The war was over in 1781 when he was 17. Samuel Hitchkock was born in 1755 and studied law during the War which ended when he

was 16.

                                                            1 As described below, Troup became a business partner of Harison’s.

One was young but not too young to have served: John McNairy was born in 1762 and studied law during the War which ended when he was

19. Another would have been old enough to have serve politically, and was likely not to old to have served militarily: John Pickering (1737-1805) practiced law. One did serve the Crown: William Drayton, Sr. (1732-1790) served from 1765 to 1780 as Chief Justice for the

Province of East Florida, an appointee of colonial governor. He was compelled to resign when it became apparent that he was sympathetic with the patriots.

One was a Quaker: William Lewis was born in 1752 and was a Quaker. He practiced law during the War

including defending men in (patriotic) state courts against charges of treason.2 (Consider this again: Washington, who had served as Commander of the Continental Army and was now Commander-in-Chief of the United States, nominated a conscientious objector, first on September 24, 1789, to be the first United States attorney for the District of Pennsylvania, and subsequently to the federal district court of Pennsylvania. His September 1789 letter to the Annual Meeting of Quakers is in the footnote.3) Now let’s turn to Richard Harison’s 35 peers whom Washington nominated to serve as

United States attorney for the districts other than that of New York. (Harison was the only United States attorney for New York during Washington’s terms.) Two of these 35 (William Lewis and John Sitgreaves) were later nominated to serve as district court judges, so they were treated above. This leaves 33 new individuals.

I have no information on three as to their service during the War: William Clark; William

Murry (or Murray), and Benjamin Wood (or Woods).

                                                            2 His biography is Esther Ann McFarland, William Lewis, Esquire: Enlightened Statesman, Profound Lawyer, and Useful Citizen (2012). For example, he was on the defense team representing Abraham Carlisle and John Roberts in 1778 after the British had withdrawn from Philadelphia. Great American Trials (2002), http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3498200031.html 3 “Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the persons and consciences of men from oppression, it certainly is the duty of rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but, according to their stations, to prevent it in others. “The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their consciences, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights. While men perform their social duties faithfully, they do all that society or the state can with propriety demand or expect; and remain responsible only to their Maker for their religion, or modes of faith, which they may prefer or profess.

“Your principles and conduct are well known to me; and it is doing the people called Quakers no more than justice to say, that (except their declining to share with others the burden of the common defense) there is no denomination among us, who are more exemplary and useful citizens.

“I assure you very explicitly, that in my opinion the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness; and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be as extensively accommodated to them, as a due regard to the protection and essential interests of the nation may justify and permit.”

Eight of the 35 were military veterans, including the future Chief Justice John Marshall (b.

1755). At least one had seen combat (Samuel Sherburne, Jr.) and he had lost a leg. Another was the future president, Andrew Jackson (b. 1767). At age 13 he had fought, been taken prisoner, and, while a prisoner, scarred for life by the British. Of the remainder, I have not been able to determine if four served militarily or not. Six were politically active during the War.

Sixteen of the 35 served neither militarily nor politically. Had any of these been Tories?

The oldest among these was Abraham Ogden (1743-1798) who befriended Washington during the War. The others were about the age to have been too young to serve militarily, and certainly too young have served politically:

James Brown (b. 1766) Daniel Davis (ca.1762–1835) John Davis (1761-1847) Ray Green (or Greene) (b. 1765) Zebulon Hollingsworth (ca. 1762-1824) William Hill (b. 1767) Amos Marsh (1764-1811) Thomas Nelson (b. 1764) William McAllister (1758-1823) William McClung (b. 1758) Harrison G. Otis (1765-1848) John J Pringle (1753-1843) William Rawle (b. 1759) Edwards St. Loe Laurence (b. 1762) Richard Stockton (b. 1764)

So, no, none of the George Washington nominees for the position of United States attorney in any of the districts appear to have been former Tories, other than Richard Harison. Now we can turn to Richard Harison’s life.

RICHARD HARISON (1748-1829)

Richard Harison (often misspelled as Harrison) was born in New York City on January 23, 1748. Like many colonists, he was royal to the core. Harison’s paternal grandfather was Francis Harison (d. 1740) who had arrived in New York from England in 1708 in the company of Lord Lovelace, the newly appointed governor. Francis Harison was appointed to several offices, among them the first judge of the colonial Vice-Admiralty Court and Recorder (a position later held by grandson Richard) from 1724 to 1735 when he returned to England. His son George, a Tory councillor, married Jane Nichols, a descendant of the first royal governor of New York, Richard Nichols. George (d. 1773) and Jane were the parents of Richard Harison.

  

Photograph of portrait of RICHARD HARISON (1748-1829)

in public view at Franklin County (NY) Historical & Museum Society

(There is another image of Harison in William Safire, Scandalmonger 495 (2000): a detail of “Albert Rosenthal, after a miniature by F. Drexel, 1929, Columbia University”)

 

Harison entered King's College (its pre-Revolution name; now Columbia) in 1760 at the age of 13. He and one classmate, John Jay, graduated in 1764. (Columbia Law Library holds over 200 volumes of Harison’s papers. http://www.law.columbia.edu/library/collections/special; the New-York Historical Society also holds papers of his.) Both young men received master of arts degrees in classical studies from King’s in 1767. Harison was admitted to the bar in 1767, John Jay in 1768.

During the Revolution, Harison remained loyal to the Crown. See the report, below, of his refusal to take an oath of allegiance dated August 26, 1778. His law license was accordingly suspended.

About 15 to 20%, or 500,000 of the white male population of the 2.5 million colonists were Tories, also known as Loyalists. After the War, 65,000 to 70,000 left the new United States for Florida, Great Britain, Canada (Upper Canada, now Ontario; or New Brunswick), British possessions in the Caribbean. Most, obviously, remained and became citizens of the United States. Harison was one of these and he made a large contribution from the formal end of the War in 1783 for the next 47 years to his 1829 death to New York City, upstate New York, and our country.

Public Papers of George Clinton, No. 1696

Harison’s first wife was Catherine Jones.4 In 1783, the year the peace treaty was concluded, Harison he married the young Frances Ludlow (1766-1797). Like Harison’s family and many colonists, Frances Ludlow’s family had served the King. Her paternal grandfather, Gabriel Ludlow (d. 1773), had been a member of the colonial New York Assembly (1739-1745). Her father was George Duncan Ludlow (1734-1808), one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the British Province of New-York, from 1769 until he was forced out of New York in the mid-1770’s. When British General Howe arrived in New York 1776, Ludlow returned to the city and served on the British court until 1780. In 1783, he fled to England and in 1784 was made the first Chief Justice of New Brunswick (1784-1808). The Ludlow’s were just one of many families split by the Revolution.

New Brunswick was not a new place to the Ludlow family. Frances’ mother had lived there. In 1764, when Frances’ mother’s family resided in Fredericton, Frances’ mother was then 17 and engaged to be married. She survived a house fire that killed her mother and seven of her eight siblings.5

After the War, Harison “regained the public favor by his kindness and urbanity, spiced frequently enough with dashes of sharp wit” and his loyalty to the principles of Federalism.6 The New York Supreme Court of Judicature readmitted him to the bar on April 21, 1786. No doubt his friendship with Alexander Hamilton helped.

Chancellor James Kent described the character of Harison's law practice in the years after

                                                            4 T. Barclay, Selections from the Correspondence of Thomas Barclay Formerly British Consul-General of New-York 109-110, n.2 (1894). 5 H. Mott, ed., The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 50 (1919), pp. 40-41. 6 D. Fox, The Decline of the Aristocracy in the Politics of New York 1801-1840, 13 (1965).

the Revolution as “scholarly and lucid.”7

In 1788, Harison was extremely busy contributing to society. He served Trinity Church, Manhattan, most of his life. From 1788 to 1827, two years before his death, he was vestryman, warden and comptroller. He served as a trustee of his alma mater, Columbia, from 1788 to his death. From 1788 to 1789, he was a member of the New York Assembly. Also in 1788, Harison was a delegate to the New York Constitutional Convention on ratification of the Federal Constitution (the “Poughkeepsie Convention”).

As noted in the first part of this essay, the 1789 Judiciary Act of the First Congress marked the beginning of a national system of American law. On November 3, 1789, thirteen weeks before the first session of the U.S. Supreme Court, the United States District Court of New York opened on the second floor of the "Exchange," a market building upon open arches, at the foot of Broad Street in lower Manhattan. One of its first orders of business was to record Richard Harison’s September 26, 1789, commission as “Attorney of the District of New York.” In a personal letter accompanying his commission, President Washington wrote to Harison:

The high importance of the judicial system in our national government makes it an indispensable duty to select such characters to fill the several offices in it as would discharge their respective duties in honor to themselves and advantage to the country.8

          Minutes Book, U.S. Circuit Court for New York, Vol. 1790‐1808, p. 4, National Archives, N.Y. Branch 

As U.S. Attorney, Harison laid the foundations of admiralty and maritime law. The first words of the first federal indictment in New York, April 13, 1790, above, was that of The United States v. James Hopkins and William Brown "for conspiring.., upon the high seas to destroy the Brigantine or Vessel called the Morning Star and to Murder the Captain and a Passanger [sic] on                                                             7 R. Hendrickson, Hamilton I (1757-1789) 410 (Mason/Charter 1976). You can read a long example of Harison’s abilities by reading his speech to the New York Assembly on March 28, 1787, on behalf of petitioners seeking independence for Vermont. http://founders.archives.gov/?q=richard%20harison&s=1111311111&sa=&r=3&sr= 8 September 26, 1789 letter from George Washington to Richard Harison, New-York Historical Society.

board the same.”

Trial began on April 14, 1790, in the Circuit Court (the District Court's original jurisdiction was particularly limited at this time) before Chief Justice John Jay, Justice Cushing, District Judge Duane and a jury. A guilty verdict was returned the same day. The punishment: six months imprisonment “without Bail or Mainprize” to begin by standing in the pillory and to conclude with “39 stripes upon the naked back” at the public whipping post.9

                Martha Joanna Lamb, 2 History of the City of New York 634 (1881) 

The (Old Royal) Exchange Building the initial site of the U.S. District Court of New York

and of the U.S. Supreme Court

Harison continued in office under President John Adams. After that 1796 election, the Federalist-dominated Congress--shaken by the crisis with France and hoping to curb Republican “conspiracies” at home that reflected the French Revolution abroad -- passed the Sedition Act of 1798. It meted out fines and jail terms on conviction for “false scandalous and malicious writing” about the President, Congress or nation.

In 1799 William Durell (sometimes spelled Durrell), the publisher of the Mount Pleasant Register, printed an article that was critical of President Adams. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering read the article and referred it to Harison. Arrested in July, indicted that fall, he was tried by a jury under the common law doctrine of seditious libel (since the publication had occurred a

                                                            9 Minutes Book, U.S. Circuit Court, Vol. 1790-1808, p.6, National Archives, N.Y. Branch.

couple of weeks before the Sedition Act had become effective), convicted, and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment and a $50 fine. An image of the handwritten indictment which includes a quote of the allegedly seditious remarks is on a webpage called “the National Archives at New York City” here: http://www.archives.gov/nyc/education/images/alien-and-sedition.pdf

The next day, however, in what must be one of the first exercises of federal prosecutorial discretion, Harison wrote to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering in support of leniency for Durell:

He appears to be very poor at present, has a large Family to maintain, and has . . . since discontinued his Newspaper. He pretends also that the Libel was inadvertently copied from another Paper, that it would not have been published in his, if he had been fully apprised of its Nature. Under these Circumstances, as the Offence regards the President Personally, the Offender appears to be scarcely an Object for Example. It has been hinted to me by the Judges that it might be worthy of our Consideration whether a Remission of all Sentence except that dates to the Security for future Conduct might not operate Beneficially.10

Harison went on to suggest dropping two other libel cases in the District, one of which involved a member of the state legislature. He reminded Pickering that it was inconvenient and expensive to round up witnesses 200 miles away and thought that more good will would come to the Federalists from “suspending the Prosecution than by the Pursuit of it.”11 President Adams was impressed with Harison’s opinion, and granted Durell a partial pardon, ending the fine and the six weeks remaining of a four-month sentence, but retaining the $2,000 security for good behavior (no more offensive remarks) for two years.12

At a time when a U.S. Attorney could have a private practice, Harison represented a party in 1800 in a “commercial law classic . . . Le Gruen vs Gouverneur & Kemble [1 Johns. (NY) Cas. 436], an often-cited case heard in 1800: it involved the sale and export to Europe of 600 bales of cotton and 1,200 pounds of indigo by Gouverneur & Kemble as agents for Le Gruen. The claim was for $120,000. Hamilton, Burr and Richard Harison won for Le Gruen while Gouverneur Morris, Robert Troup and Brockholst Livingston represented Gouveneur & Kemble, the losing side.”13

In the same year, 1800, Harison was one of three judges (with John Lansing and Richard Varick) presiding over a sensational murder trial with its proceedings published.14 The defendant was charged with killing a woman he had been courting whose body was found in a well dug

                                                            10 April 10, 1800 letter from Harison to Timothy Pickering, New-York Historical Society. 11 Id. 12 Gordon Belt (founder of “the Posterity Project”), The Sedition Act: William Durell, http://4.bp.blogspot.com/IVKnR4X1TMg/SIYh_N63uYI/AAAAAAAAAHo/rIBl2ajTh_U/s1600-h/mountpleasant.jpgWilliamDurrell. 13 Estelle Fox Kleiger, The Trial of Levi Weeks or The Manhattan Well Mystery 27 (2001 ed.). 14 Report of the trial of Levi Weeks on an indictment for the murder of Gulielma Sands, on Monday the thirty-first day of March, and Tuesday the first day of April, 1800 (1800). It is the first case included in a mutlivolume anthology: John Davison Lawson and Robert Lorenzo Howard, 1 American State Trials: A Collection of the Important and Interesting Criminal Trials which Have Taken Place in the United States, from the Beginning of Our Government to the Present Day with Notes and Annotations 1-40 (1914).

earlier that year (the case is called “The Manhattan Well Case”). The defendant was represented by three prominent attorneys: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Henry Brockholst Livingston. Weeks was acquitted and went on to design the Auburn Mansion in Natchez, Mississippi. The trial has been recounted recently in Paul Collins, Duel with the Devil: The True Story of How Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Teamed Up to Take on America’s First Sensational Murder Mystery (2013) and Estelle Fox Klieger, The Trial of Levi Weeks: Or the Manhattan Well Mystery (1989; paperback 2001).

Harison left office as U.S. Attorney in 1801 after the election of Thomas Jefferson. He assumed the position of Recorder that year and he followed the rules for the office from the date of its establishment in England in the 17th century. He had two roles, one compensated and the other not. As Recorder (that is, city judge), he was compensated like other judges under a state fee schedule. As the lawyer advising the council or drafting ordinances, there was no compensation. The workload of the role as lawyer increased and Harison needed assistant counsel. The Council agreed to pay him a retainer for his work as lawyer (from which he could hire help) and, from that point on, city corporate counsel became accountable to the council, not the governor. It is said to have evidenced the transition, at the local level, from monarchical to democratic government.15  Harison served in this role as Counsel to the City Corporation from 1801 to 1807.16

The Merchants’ National Bank of the City of New York was founded in 1803. Harison and Alexander Hamilton were its attorneys.17 The next year, 1804, Harison was a pallbearer at Alexander Hamilton’s funeral.18

In 1806 Harison was on the defense team with Thomas A. Emmet, Josiah Ogden Hoffman and others who successfully defended William S. Smith and Samuel G. Ogden in a federal prosecution alleging violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794 for support of Francisco de Miranda in his fight against Spanish rule in Latin America. The prosecution team consisted of Nathan Sanford and Pierpont Edwards (a son of Rev. Jonathan Edwards).19

Harison’s eldest child was George Folliott Harison (1776-184620), a son from his first marriage, who never married. He, too, became an attorney. It was in the garden of the country home father and son shared on Thirty-first Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, between 1824 and 1830, that “Harison’s Yellow” rose was first cultivated by Harison (who died in December 1829) or his son or the two of them. Its scientific name is Rosa x. harisonii. It has a double-blossom. It grows wild in places where it was carried by emigrants: parts of Texas where it is sometimes called “the Yellow Rose of Texas” (although the song by that name refers to a heroine at the Battle of San Jacinto) and all along the Oregon Trail where it is sometimes called the “Oregon Trail Rose.”

                                                            15 William E. Nelson, Fighting for the City: A History of the New York City Corporation Counsel, [NYU Law] Faculty Focus 69 (Autumn 2008), reprinted from N.Y. Law Journal. 16 M. Cardozo, New York City Law Department Annual Report 2004-2005 35. 17 H. Syrett, 29 The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 104 (1979). 18 H. Syrett, 29 The Papers of Alexander Hamilton 323 (1979). 19 William S. Smith and Samuel G. Ogden Trials: 1806, http://law.jrank.org/pages/2423/William-S-Smith-Samuel-G-Ogden-Trials-1806.html. 20 The American Rose Annual, vol. 28 (1943).

“Harison’s Rose”

a/k/a “Yellow Rose of Texas” a/k/a “Oregon Trail Rose”

a/k/a Rosa x. harisonii In addition to George Folliott Harison, Richard Harison had two other children: William

H. (1795-1860),21 and Richard N. Both of them married into the Ogden family, for whom the town of Ogdensburg is named. Son William H. married Gertrude Ogden.22 Son Richard N. married Harriet Seton Ogden.23 Richard (A.B. 1804) and William (A.B. 1811) received degrees from Columbia.24

Harison’s remains are interred at Trinity Church, Manhattan. Six years after his December,

1829, death, in an 1836 address to the Law Association of New York, Chancellor James Kent

                                                            21 Trustee, Columbia College, 1838-1860. http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/stand_columbia/knktrust.html; Saint Nicholas Society of City of New York, Genealogical Record 30 (1902), http://books.google.com/books?id=_6Q-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=%22george+harison%22+%22francis+harison%22&source=bl&ots=gn1O6ew6nU&sig=YN3d9DXOuBu3DZPgubkw7shNgXk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xzKFUsDcL5HdsASZ5oHQBw&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22george%20harison%22%20%22francis%20harison%22&f=false. 22 William Ogden Wheeler, The Ogden Family in America, Elizabethtown Branch, and Their English Ancestry; John Ogden, the Pilgrim, and His Descendants, 1640-1906 (1907), http://archive.org/details/ogdenfamilyiname00whee 23 Id. at 296. 24 Catalogue of Columbia College, in the City of New-York (1844), http://books.google.com/books?id=GHXOAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=%22catalogue+of+columbia+college%22+1758+1836&source=bl&ots=m9iySkcys4&sig=5n-FkL56bFhZ4MoqnElgamSh8Pw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8ekbUf-3KObe0QHgqYHABg&ved=0CEQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22catalogue%20of%20columbia%20college%22%201758%201836&f=false

compared Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Harison as advocates. He rated Harison highest in learning, and praised his “calm, methodical and logical arguments at the bar, free from all loose and declamatory expansion.”25

No account of Harison’s life can omit his role in developing upstate New York. Harison was responsible for the naming of Malone, New York (and, through migration by its townspeople, for the naming of other towns by that name in other states). He was a member of “the Macomb syndicate” that owned land in the area, a territory consisting of three-quarters of a millions of acres exclusive of water. The town of Malone was originally called Harison but was changed in 1808 to Ezraville after Harison’s friend, Ezra L’Hommedieu. In 1812 it was changed to Malone, after Edmond Malone, the Irish Shakespearian scholar and critic, another friend of Harison.26

Robert Troup was a fellow lawyer and a partner of Harison’s in ownership of land in upstate New York. Troup served as clerk of the District of New York (1789-1796) and the judge of the District of New York (1796-1798). He was best known to the public for his published account of life on the prison ship The Jersey during the Revolutionary War.27 A partner of Troup’s and Harison’s was (county) Judge William Cooper.28 Cooper was the founder of Cooperstown, New York, served in Congress for two terms (1795-1797, 1799-1801), and was the father of novelist James Fenimore Cooper. In 1806, a son of William Cooper, also named William, studied law in Harison’s law office.29

Another partner of Harison’s in land ownership in upstate was Josiah Ogden Hoffman.30  It is with some frequency that the owners are described in various materials as “Harison and Hoffman” (or misspelled as “Harrison and Hoffman”).

Harison built a structure (see picture below) in Canton, New York, in 1818, on the town’s primary road to serve as a home and office near his local business interests. Its address is 54 East Main Street (Route 11). It was remodeled in 1925 as the home of the president of St. Lawrence University. It was remodeled again in 1998 and renamed MacAllaster House after two of the four benefactors.

                                                            25 J. Kent, Address Before the Law Association of New York, October 21, 1836. 26 History: Malone (part 1 of 4); Franklin Co., New York at http://files.usgarchives.org/ny/franklin/history/1918/malone1.txt (a 1918 document is its source). See also Malone Local Waterfront Revitalization Program, Sec II(A)(1) (“History of Malone”) (Alexander Macomb purchased 3.6 million acres and then sold portions to friends and business associates, including Harison), http://maloneny.org/files/Section_II-Final Draft.. 27 C. Hough (2d Cir. Judge, d. 1927), The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, 1789-1919: Its Growth, and the Men Who Have Done Its Work 11, 35, 37 (1934). 28 W. Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years 157, 304-306 (2007). 29 W. Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years 68 (2007). 30 Edgar C. Emerson, ed., Our County and Its People: A Descriptive Work on Jefferson County [New York] (1898) (for example, chapters on towns on Rodman and Hounsfield) (Josiah Ogden Hoffman is mistakenly called Joseph Ogden Hoffman); Morse v. South, 80 F. 206 (Cir. Ct. D. Ky. 1897).

Above: Harison’s home and office, in Canton, NY, before renovation Below: now MacAllaster House, home of the president of St. Lawrence University

According to the Franklin County Historical and Museum Society of Malone: “Harrison deeded land for schools, churches, etc... which are still being used today. He was also one of only two slave owners in the area in 1810 (that is recorded), which is ironic because his house on Webster St. in Malone was used as a ‘station’ in the Underground Railroad and the church he deeded land to and gifted money to was also a ‘station.’ These two buildings still stand today and you can still see where the freedom seekers would have been housed (tunnels, secret rooms, etc...).”31

                                                            31 Email Oct. 31, 2012, to the author from Jennifer Robert Johnson, Director, Franklin County Historical and Museum Society, Malone, New York; The North Country Lantern [published by the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association], Fall 2005. Ms. Johnson suggested the following source for early Malone history: Fredrick J. Seaver, Historical Sketches of Franklin County (1918), http://archive.org/details/historicalsketch00seav. See also http://www.franklinhistory.org/?page_id=94