Francis Dana
Francis Dana (
1743–
1811) was an
American lawyer, jurist, and statesman from
Massachusetts. He served as a delegate to the
Continental Congress in
1777-
1778 and
1784. He signed the
Articles of Confederation.
Francis was born on
June 13, 1743 in
Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of lawyer Richard Dana. He was educated at
Harvard where he graduated in
1762, then read for the law and was admitted to the bar and built a successful legal practice in
Boston.
Dana was first elected to Massachusetts's provincial (revolutionary) Congress in
1774. In 1775 the Continental Congress dispatched him to
England in an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the differences leading to the
Revolutionary War. He returned the following year, and was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1777, where he signed the Articles of Confederation in 1778.
Dana left the Congress to accompany
John Adams to
Paris as a secretary to the diplomatic delegation. In
1780 he was named as American minister to
Russia, and while he never gained their recognition, he remained there until
1783. Then was again elected to the national congress in 1784. In
1785 Dana was appointed to the
Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and served there until
1806, as the Chief Justice after
1791. He was a member of the state convention which ratified the
U.S. Constitution in
1788.
Dana generally retired from public life in 1806. He was one of the early members of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and actively supported the growth of Harvard University. His grandson,
Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815-1882) was a noted lawyer and author who served as
U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts and wrote the classic novel
Two Years Before the Mast. Francis died on
April 25, 1811 at
Cambridge, Massachusetts and is buried in the Old Cambridge Cemetery there.
*
Dana's Congressional biography
