Biography of Constitution Signer-

GUNNING BEDFORD, JR. of DELAWARE

Gunning Bedford, Jr., a lawyer and judge, was one of the signers of the United States Constitution for the state of Delaware. After the government of the United States was organized in 1789, Bedford was appointed by President George Washington as the first United States district judge for Delaware.

This distinguished patriot was born in Philadelphia in 1747. His father, Gunning Bedford, Sr., was a Philadelphia architect who served as a captain in the French and Indian War, and also was an alderman in the city of Philadelphia. His mother's maiden name was Susannah Jacquett. He was the fifth of eleven children.

A Princeton classmate of James Madison

When he was twenty years old, Gunning Bedford, Jr., entered the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. One of his classmates was James Madison, who later became the "Father of the Constitution" and the fourth President of the United States. Perhaps because he was older than his other classmates, Bedford made an excellent scholastic record, graduating at the head of his class and giving the valedictory address.

Bedford also was different from the other members of his class in that he already was married, and at the graduation ceremony his wife was present with their first baby. His wife was Jane Ballaroux Parker, daughter of the editor of the New York Post Boy. Her father, James Parker, had been an apprentice printer with Benjamin Franklin in Boston, and he and Franklin had exchanged the first silver dollars they ever earned. Franklin's first silver dollar was preserved by Parker and made into a punch strainer that later was given to the Historical Society of Delaware by Bedford's daughter.

After his graduation in 1771, Bedford returned to Philadelphia where he studied law with a prominent attorney, Joseph Reed. About eight years later he moved to Dover, Delaware on August 4, 1779, he was admitted to the bar and began practicing law in Dover.

An Aide-de-Camp of George Washington

No authentic record has been found of Bedford's activities during the Revolutionary War. However. in the will of his daughter, Henrietta Jane Bedford, filed in 1871, he was described as an "Aide-de-Camp to General Washington in the Revolutionary War." The will left a pair of pocket pistols to the Smithsonian Institution and gave their history as follows: "During the Revolutionary War, General Washington, desiring my father to go from Trenton to New York on some important secret embassy at night, and fearing that he was not sufficiently armed with the pistols in his holsters, presented him with a pair of pocket-pistols with a view to his protection and greater security."

Bedford has sometimes been confused with a cousin five years older than himself who had the same name. This other Gunning Bedford was born in New Castle, Del., in 1742. He had served in the French and Indian War, and had held the rank of major at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel with a Delaware regiment and was wounded in the battle of White Plains. In 1795, he was elected governor of Delaware and served in that office until his death in 1797.

By the time the peace treaty had been signed with Great Britain in 1783, Gunning Bedford, Jr., was living in Wilmington, Del. That year he was elected as a member of the Continental Congress where he served until 1785. It is not difficult to imagine that considerable confusion arose over the fact that his cousin of the same name also represented Delaware in the Continental Congress during the same period.

On April 26, 1784, Gunning Bedford, Jr., was appointed as attorney general for the state of Delaware. He held this office until 1789, and is said to have served with distinction.

A delegate from Delaware at the Annapolis Convention

Bedford recognized that the country was in serious difficulty because of the inadequacy of the powers delegated to the national government by the Articles of Confederation, so he was a logical choice as one of Delaware's five delegates to the Annapolis Convention in 1786. That meeting had been called to discuss ways in which trade relationships between states might be improved, and it ended by calling for a Constitutional Convention to revise the Articles of Confederation.

In 1787, Bedford was appointed, with the same delegates who had attended the Annapolis Convention, as a representative of Delaware to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. He became one of the most vocal spokesmen for the interests of the small states against the large states. The forcefulness of his arguments and his eloquence have been credited with being important factors in the decision to give each state two senators in the upper house of the national Congress. When he returned home after signing the United States Constitution, Bedford worked diligently and successfully to have Delaware become the first state to ratify the Constitution.

First U.S. district judge for Delaware

Bedford devoted the rest of his life to public service. On October 24, 1788, his name was placed in nomination before the legislature to be one of the state's first U.S. senators, but Richard Bassett and George Read, two other signers of the Constitution, were selected instead. The next year, President George Washington, recognizing Bedford's outstanding legal talents, named him as the first United State's district judge for the state of Delaware, a position he held until his death. Newspaper accounts of the times show that Bedford handled one of the earliest cases ever to be tried in a United States federal court-the conviction of a smuggler in May, 1790.

In 1793, Bedford purchased a 250-acre estate near Wilmington which he named Lombardy. There he and his family lived in a large two-story mansion. Bedford died at the age of sixty-four on March 30, 1812. His wife and two children survived him. Buried in the graveyard of the First Presbyterian Church of Wilmington, Del., Bedford's body lies beneath a marble monument whose inscription says in part:

"His form was goodly, his temper amiable,
his manners winning, and his discharge
of private duties exemplary.
Reader, may his example stimulate you
to improve the talents-be they five or two,
or one-with which God has entrusted you."

As a footnote to Bedford's death, it is interesting to read a letter that was sent four days later to Henry M. Ridgely, one of the U.S. senators from Delaware:

"Dear Sir,

"The Wilmington papers which arrived the evening before last, announced the death of Judge Bedford; -this unfortunate event, unfortunate for his family, happened on Monday last. Several of my friends have urged me to an application for the vacancy occasioned by his demise. I have always thought that a personal application for a judgeship, was a matter of indelicacy and inconsistent with the modesty, which such a candidate ought to profess. I have, however, thought on reflecting how the loaves and fishes are now distributed, that there can be but one rival, and but one man, on the same political side, whose pretensions are in any way superior to mine; but in nothing else can I yield to him. . ."

This eagerness for appointment was exhibited by John Fisher, Secretary of State of Delaware, who shortly afterward received Bedford's judgeship by appointment of President James Madison.

Reference: Whitney, David C.. 1965. Encyclopedia Editor and Historian."Founders of Freedom in America-Biographies of the Signers of the Constitution of the United States." Lives of The Men Who Signed The Constitution of the United States And So Helped To Established The United States of America. Published By J.G. Ferguson Publishing Company. Chicago, Illinois. Pgs. 49-51