People of the Revolutionary War | The Founding Fathers - An Overview | Gunning Bedford Jr.
Gunning Bedford Jr. (1747-1812) - Delaware
Image: Courtesy of The Architect of the Capital
Bedford was born in 1747 at Philadelphia and reared there. The fifth of seven
children, he was descended from a distinguished family that originally
settled in Jamestown, VA. He usually referred to himself as Gunning
Bedford, Jr., to avoid confusion with his cousin and contemporary
Delaware statesman and soldier, Col. Gunning Bedford.
In 1771 signer Bedford graduated with honors from the College of
New Jersey (later Princeton), where he was a classmate of James
Madison. Apparently while still in school, Bedford wed Jane B. Parker,
who bore at least one daughter. After reading law with Joseph Read in
Philadelphia, Bedford won admittance to the bar and set up a practice.
Subsequently, he moved to Dover and then to Wilmington. He apparently
served in the Continental Army, possibly as an aide to General
Washington.
Following the war, Bedford figured prominently in the politics of
his state and nation. He sat in the legislature, on the state council,
and in the Continental Congress (1783-85). In the latter year, he was
chosen as a delegate to the Annapolis Convention but for some reason
did not attend. From 1784 to 1789 he was attorney general of Delaware.
Bedford numbered among the more active members of the
Constitutional Convention, and he missed few sessions. A large and
forceful man, he spoke on several occasions and was a member of the
committee that drafted the Great Compromise. An ardent small-state
advocate, he attacked the pretensions of the large states over the
small and warned that the latter might be forced to seek foreign
alliances unless their interests were accommodated. He attended the
Delaware ratifying convention.
For another 2 years, Bedford continued as Delaware's attorney
general. In 1789 Washington designated him as a federal district judge
for his state, an office he was to occupy for the rest of his life.
His only other ventures into national politics came in 1789 and 1793,
as a Federalist presidential elector. In the main, however, he spent
his later years in judicial pursuits, in aiding Wilmington Academy, in
fostering abolitionism, and in enjoying his Lombardy Hall farm.
Bedford died at the age of 65 in 1812 and was buried in the First
Presbyterian Churchyard in Wilmington. Later, when the cemetery was
abandoned, his body was transferred to the Masonic Home, on the
Lancaster Turnpike in Christiana Hundred, DE.
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