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"James Bowdoin (August 7, 1726 - November 6, 1790) was an American
political and intellectual leader from Boston, Massachusetts during the
American Revolution. He served in both the colonial council (senate) and
house and was President of the state's constitutional convention. After
independence he was governor of
Massachusetts.
His grandfather (Pierre Boudouin) was a Huguenot refugee from France.
Pierre took his family first to Ireland, then to Portland, Maine, finally
settling in Boston in 1690. His father, also James Bowdoin, was a successful
merchant in Boston when James was born there on August 8, 1727.
Young James attended
Boston
Latin School, then graduated from Harvard in 1745. When his father died
in 1747, he inherited a considerable fortune. He took an early interest in
Natural History, and had several papers read to the Royal Society in London
by his friend and correspondent, Benjamin Franklin.
Bowdoin was elected to the colonial assembly in 1753 and served there
until named to the Council in 1756. By the end of Sir Francis Bernard's term
as governor he spoke and wrote against the royal governors and their
actions. He was proposed as a continuing Council member in 1769, but the new
governor Thomas Hutchinson rejected his membership. Boston promptly elected
him to the assembly. When Hutchinson was formally commissioned as governor
in 1760, he restored Bowdoin to the Council, reasoning that he was less
dangerous there than as an outspoken critic in the assembly.
Bowdoin as named as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1774 but
did not attend, citing health reasons. In 1775 he was elected President of
the Council and held that office until 1777. With the turmoil of the
American Revolutionary War, he sometimes acted as council president in an
executive, rather than legislative role.
When Massachusetts wrote its own constitution in 1779, he was president
of the Convention which created it, and chairman of the committee that
drafted it. His son, James Bowdoin III, also sat in this convention. Under
the new state government, governor John Hancock appointed him to a
commission to revise and consolidate the laws from colonial days.
In 1785, Bowdoin was elected Governor of Massachusetts, but his terms
were not peaceful. He called up the militia and took vigorous action to put
down Shays' Rebellion, and as a result lost the election of 1787 as Hancock
was swept back into office. In 1788 he served as a member of the
Massachusetts' convention that ratified the United States Constitution.
Throughout this period, he maintained his interest in learning a natural
history. In 1780 he was primarily responsible for the creation of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, He served as its first president
until his death and left the society his library. Bowdoin continued to
publish not only scientific papers, but verse in both English and Latin. He
was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Edinburgh, made a
fellow of Harvard, and was a member of the Royal Society of both London and
Edinburgh.
He died of consumption on November 6, 1790 in Boston. Bowdoin College in
Maine was named in his honor.
One of his relatives founded Bowdoin in Maine."
Content courtesy of Wikipedia with
relevant CelebrateBoston internal links added. Distributed under the
GNU Free Documentation License. This page will not be indexed by search
engines. w200701
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