| | 1 | Name: | Stephen Adye | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
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Stephen Adye (d. 24 March 1794) was a British military officer, a scholar of the military justice system, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1772. He was educated at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich beginning in 1757, and, by 1780, he had become a captain in the Royal Artillery of the British Army. Adye experienced active service throughout his career, including a stint as a brigade major during the American Revolutionary War, but he is most well-known for his writings on and participation in the military judicial system. He worked as a deputy judge-advocate-general in North America throughout the 1760s. In 1769, he published an influential treatise on the judicial procedures of the army. He was interested in both the historical development of the army’s legal process and its contemporary applications. He believed that all soldiers should be treated equally in the eyes of the law, regardless of their rank, and that courts-martial could guarantee just outcomes to an even greater extent than civilian jury trials. Adye and his wife, Elizabeth Hitchcock, had three sons, all of whom joined the Royal Artillery and continued their father’s legacy. He retired from the army in 1790 and died in 1794 on the island of Jersey. (DNB) | |
| 2 | Name: | Gerard Bancker | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1740 | | | Death Date: | 1798 | | | | |
| 3 | Name: | Daniel Coxe | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
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| 4 | Name: | Peter Dolland | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1730 | | | | |
| 5 | Name: | Thomas Hutchins | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1730 | | | Death Date: | 4/28/1789 | | | | | | |
Thomas Hutchins (c. 1730–28 April 1789) was a woodsman, cartographer, surveyor, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1772. Born on the New Jersey frontier and orphaned in childhood, Thomas Hutchins began surveying and making maps in 1760 as an Indian agent. He recorded his diplomatic missions to various tribes and typically produced maps of the regions he encountered. Having built a reputation as a skilled surveyor and mapmaker in North America, Hutchins received a British army commission to continue doing just that. Throughout the 1760’s and 1770’s, he joined multiple explorations surveying the Mississippi River Valley region, and later the southern colonies. All the while, Hutchins turned another profit with his surveying: acquiring land. In 1776, with the onset of the American Revolution, his promotion to captain enabled him to avoid combat and relocate to London. Two years later, he published a book on the natural history of the American northwestern frontier. Later, British authorities arrested him on treason charges for sympathizing with American patriots, but he was found innocent. The British’s suspicions were not unfounded, however, and shortly after being released, Hutchins went to Paris and took an oath of loyalty to the United States under Benjamin Franklin. In 1781 Congress employed him to serve in the south as a geographer, and he was later designated “Geographer of the United States''. Hutchinson was the first to use, and perhaps invented, the Township-Section-Range system, which is standard today. In 1788 Hutchinson secretly joined the Spanish effort to fortify New Spain, planning to renounce his American citizenship and work as surveyor-general to the Spanish Crown. He died in Pittsburgh before this could happen. (ANB) | |
| 6 | Name: | Timothy Lane | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1734 | | | Death Date: | 7/5/1807 | | | | | | |
Timothy Lane (June 1734–5 July 1807) was an inventor, scientist, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1772. His father was an apothecary, and Timothy followed in his footsteps, becoming a member of London’s Society of Apothecaries in 1757. His scientific interests were far-reaching; he was as curious about natural philosophy and chemistry as he was about medicine and botany. He was particularly interested in experiments and research on the uses of electricity that were being conducted by colleagues like APS Member Joseph Priestley. In the 1760s, Lane invented an instrument that could measure the strength of the electricity discharged from a Leyden jar. Benjamin Franklin used this device—known as “Lane’s electrometer”—in his study of atmospheric electricity. In collaboration with his colleague Henry Cavendish, Lane also created a torpedo that could dispense electric shocks. It was on the strength of his research on electricity that he became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1770. This research also led to his 1777 selection for a committee charged with discovering the ideal shape for lightning rods; this committee comprised several other prominent scientists of the day, including high-ranking members of the Royal Society and APS Member Edward Nairne. In 1801, Lane invented and patented “Measuring glasses for compounding medicines,” which were thought to be more reliable and accurate than comparable products on the market. That same year, he became the Master of the Society of Apothecaries. Lane married Ann Halford in 1763 and they had one child, Mary Aubrey Lane. He died at Mary’s home in Hampstead in 1807. (DNB) | |
| 7 | Name: | Henry Laurens | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 2/24/1724 | | | Death Date: | 12/8/1792 | | | | | | |
Henry Laurens (24 February/6 March 1724–8 December 1792) was a planter-merchant, slave holder and trader, and public officeholder, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1772. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina to a wealthy family. In 1744 he apprenticed under a prominent London merchant for three years before returning to Charleston after his father died. With his inheritance, he opened up an export business dealing in deerskins, rice, rum, and slaves. He held 20,000 acres in plantation land as well as multiple residential properties. He accepted an election to the Assembly in 1757. Laurens believed that the crown did not respect the rights of its colonial citizens, declining an appointment to the Royal Council for this reason in 1764. However, he was also apprehensive of the growing revolutionary zeal; declaring his fealty to British law after the Sons of Liberty raided his basement during the Stamp Act crisis in 1765. As tensions between Britain and the Colonies increased, his sympathies shifted towards independence: in 1774 he joined the first South Carolina congress, became its president in 1775, and in 1776 he fought to defend Charleston. Seeing the inconsistency in his claim of exploitation by the hands of the British and his own slave-holding, Laurens freed the hundreds of enslaved people working on his plantation. He was a delegate to the continental congress from 1777 to 1779, also serving as its president from 1777-1778. In 1780 British naval forces captured him at sea, en route to the Netherlands. The crown charged him with treason and held him in the tower of London. In captivity, his health declined before Benjamin Franklin secured his release in 1781. Still, Laurens joined Franklin at the peace conference in Paris before returning to New York in 1784. His now failing health along with the news of his son’s death at the hands of British forces weighed on him until his death. Rather unusually, he requested that his former slaves build and ignite his funeral pyre. (ANB, DNB) | |
| 8 | Name: | Jesse Lukens | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
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| 9 | Name: | Arch McClean | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
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| 10 | Name: | George Milligan | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
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| 11 | Name: | John Montresor | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 4/6/1736 | | | Death Date: | 6/26/1799 | | | | | | |
John Montresor (6 April 1736–26 June 1799) was a British military engineer and officer, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1772. John spent his early years in Gibraltar, learning the basics of military engineering from his father, who was a colonel of engineers. In 1754, his father arranged for John to accompany him on a military expedition led by General Edward Braddock at the beginning of the French and Indian War. In 1755, Braddock’s troops attacked the French-held Fort Duquense, and John was badly wounded; he would suffer from this injury for the rest of his life. He served on several other expeditions throughout the war, some of which were marked by dangerous and nearly deadly conditions: on a mission in Quebec under General James Murray, John suffered a month of freezing and nearly starving circumstances. In 1766, while on leave in England, he was promoted, earning the titles captain-lieutenant and engineer-extraordinary. Montresor served with the British army throughout the Revolutionary War, occasionally destroying fortresses, including Castle William near Boston, that he had helped to fortify just a few years before. John had married in 1764 and made his home on an island near New York, but in 1778 decided to return to England, resigning his post and hoping to live out the rest of his life peacefully. However, in 1782, the commissioner of public accounts became suspicious of some of John’s expenditures during the war; it seemed that he had spent tens of thousands of government pounds for which he could not account. He fought this audit and tried to clear his name for nearly a decade, but was thrown in Maidstone prison for his misdealings, where he died in 1799. (ANB, DNB) | |
| 12 | Name: | Samuel Williams | | | Year Elected: | 1772 | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Deceased
| | | Birth Date: | 1734 | | | Death Date: | 1 / /1817 | | | | |
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