James Duane
Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New York
In office September 26, 1789 – March 17, 1794
Appointed by	George Washington
Preceded by	Seat established by 1 Stat. 73
Succeeded by	John Laurance
44th Mayor of New York City
In office 1784–1789
Preceded by	David Mathews
Succeeded by	Richard Varick
Personal details
Born	James Duane (1733-02-06)February 6, 1733 New York City, Province of New York, British America
Died	February 1, 1797(1797-02-01) (aged 63) Schenectady, New York
Resting place	Christ Episcopal Church Duanesburg, New York 42°46′08″N 74°09′19″W / 42.76896°N 74.15517°W / 42.76896; -74.15517
Political party	Federalist
Parent	Anthony Duane Robert Livingston (guardian) (father)
Relatives	George W. Featherstonhaugh Jr. James Chatham Duane
Education	read law

James Duane (February 6, 1733 – February 1, 1797) was an American attorney, jurist, and American Revolutionary leader from New York. He served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and the Congress of the Confederation, a New York state senator, the 44th Mayor of New York City, the 1st post-colonial Mayor of New York City and a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of New York. Duane was a signatory of the Continental Association and the Articles of Confederation.

Born on February 6, 1733, in New York City, Province of New York, British America, Duane completed preparatory studies and read law in 1754,^[1] with James Alexander.^[2] He was admitted to the bar on August 3, 1754,^[3] and entered private practice in New York City from 1754 to 1762, when he became a clerk of the Chancery Court of New York.^[4]

Duane was acting Attorney General of the Province of New York in 1767,^[1] and a boundary commissioner in 1768 (and again in 1784), before returning to private practice in New York City in 1774 and 1775. He was a delegate to the Congress of the Confederation from 1776 to 1783. He was a member of the Provincial Congress of New York from 1776 to 1777. He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1782 to 1785, and from 1788 to 1790. He was the 44th Mayor of New York City from 1784 to 1789,^[4] appointed by the Council of Appointment.^[5] He was chosen a member of the Annapolis Convention in 1786, but did not attend. He was a delegate to the New York Convention which ratified the United States Constitution in 1788.^[3] Duane was a member of the Federalist Party.^[1]

Duane represented Trinity Church in the very protracted legal action brought by heirs of Anneke Jans, who claimed that they, and not the church, were the lawful owners of much of lower Manhattan, a tract which had been given to the church by the British crown.^[6] By the early 1770s, his practice earned him 1,400 pounds annually.^[7] At the height of his success, Duane had a house in Manhattan, one in the country, and an estate near Schenectady, New York, of 36,000 acres (15,000 ha) and 253 tenants.^[7] He was a vestryman of Trinity Church, was appointed one of the church's nine trustees during a post-war crisis about the church's Tory-leanings,^[8] and was also a trustee of Kings College, the precursor to Columbia University.^[1]

With his boyhood friend James De Lancey, Duane was one of the Socialborough Proprietors, holding an area obtained by grant in 1771 and located on both sides of Otter Creek in the present towns of Pittsford and Rutland, Vermont.^[9]

Duane was politically conservative.^[7] Until his marriage to Mary Livingston, he had been a member of James De Lancey's political faction,^[1] which while opposed to the Crown's policies, did not endorse the use of mob violence to protest British measures. His efforts to support resistance in New York led to his being chosen with others to represent the Province of New York at the Congressional meetings in Philadelphia. He remained active in both capacities.

Duane was a delegate to the First Continental Congress held in Philadelphia during the autumn of 1774 in reaction to the British Navy's blockade of Boston Harbor and the passage of the Intolerable Acts by Parliament in response to the December 1773 Boston Tea Party. He was one of the many who were most disposed to reconciliation with Britain, and supported the Galloway Plan of Union, which was, however, rejected by the majority of the delegates. Upon his return to New York, he was name to the Committee of Sixty, a committee of inspection formed in the City and County of New York (Manhattan, New York City) in 1775, to enforce the Continental Association, a boycott of British goods enacted by the First Continental Congress.^[10]

He was Indian Commissioner for the Province of New York in 1774, and in 1775 represented Congress as an Indian Commissioner at Albany, New York.^{[citation needed]}

He was a delegate to the Provincial Convention held in New York City on April 20, 1775 where delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. It included the delegates to the first congress and also five new members. The scope of the Provincial Convention did not extend beyond electing delegates, and they dispersed on April 22, the day before news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord arrived. Duane was one of those chosen as a delegate.

The Committee of Sixty was replaced by a more representative Committee of One Hundred on May 1, 1775. The Committee still considered itself loyal to the British Crown, but was instead opposed to the laws of the Parliament of Great Britain which they considered unconstitutional because they had no representation in it. The Committee of One Hundred was officially replaced by the New York Provincial Congress which first convened on May 23, 1775. In the meantime, the Second Continental Congress had convened its first session on May 10.

At first, he opposed the Declaration of Independence.^{[citation needed]} However, as the British government sent the largest combined navy and army force the British government had ever dispatched outside of Europe, he saw the futility of any further concord with the British government and advocated independence.^{[citation needed]}

However, his local constituency later returned him to the new state constitutional convention from 1776 to 1777.^{[citation needed]} Due to his excellent legal and political philosophical background, he served on the committee that drafted New York's constitution.^{[citation needed]} Subsequently he was elected as a delegate by the State of New York to the Continental Congress.^{[citation needed]} When the British occupied New York in 1776, he was forced from his home.^{[citation needed]} With the British Army forces quick on his tail and those of other American leaders, he withdrew his wife and family to the relative safety of her father's home at Livingston Manor.^{[citation needed]} In 1778 he signed the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia.^{[citation needed]} He remained active as a political leader throughout the war and returned home to Gramercy Park in 1783, commenting that his home looked "as if they had been inhabited by wild beasts".^[11]

As Mayor, one of Duane's first acts was to donate to the poor the money usually spent on entertainment for his Inauguration – about 20 guineas.^[5] During his time in office, he strove to help the city revive itself after the damage done by the war and the British occupation, but he was unable to maintain the city's status as the capital of the United States.^[1] As head of the Mayor's Court, he heard the case of Rutgers v. Waddington, handing down a Solomonic decision which pleased neither party. After he was called before the State Assembly to explain his thinking, he was censured by that body.^[12]

In 1785 Duane was one of 32 prominent New Yorkers who met to create the New York Manumission Society, intended to put pressure on the state of New York to abolish slavery, as every state in the north had done except New York and New Jersey.^[13]

Duane was nominated by President George Washington on September 25, 1789, to the United States District Court for the District of New York, to a new seat authorized by 1 Stat. 73.^[4] He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 25, 1789, and received his commission on September 26, 1789.^[4] His service terminated on March 17, 1794, due to his resignation.^[4]

Duane died on February 1, 1797, in Duanesburg, Schenectady County, New York.^{[Note 1][3][4]} He was interred under Christ Church in Duanesburg.^[3]

Duane's parents were Eva Benson and Anthony Duane (c. 1679–1747), a Protestant Irishman from County Galway in Ireland who first came to New York as an officer of the Royal Navy in 1698. By the time of his James' birth, Anthony had become a wealthy Anglo-Irish colonial settler.^[7] Like others of colonial background, Anthony considered himself merely settling from one part of the British Empire to another as a free subject.^{[citation needed]} Consequently, he maintained strong allegiance to the crown throughout his life, values which he later passed on to his son.^{[citation needed]} He met and courted Eva Benson, whose father, Dirck, was a local American merchant. In 1702 Anthony left the navy, settled in New York, and married Eva. They had two sons before her death. When Eva died, Anthony remarried, this time to Althea Ketaltas (Hettletas), the daughter of a wealthy Dutch merchant family.^[14] Anthony entered commerce and prospered, and the couple had a son, James.^{[citation needed]}

Duane's mother, Althea, died in 1736, and his father married a third time in 1741 to Margaret Riken (Rycken),^[14] the widow of Thomas Lynch of Flushing, New York.^{[citation needed]} When Anthony died in 1747, James became the ward of American aristocrat Robert Livingston, who was known as the 3rd Lord of the Manor.^{[citation needed]} He completed his early education at Livingston Manor,^{[citation needed]} then read law as a clerk in the offices of James Alexander.^{[citation needed]}

On October 21, 1759, Duane married Mary Livingston (1738–1821),^[15] the eldest living daughter of his former guardian Robert.^[16] In 1766, after Mary's mother, Maria Thong (1711–1765) (the granddaughter of Governor Rip Van Dam) died, Robert married the widow Gertrude (Van Rensselaer) Schuyler.^[7] Together, James and Mary had^[17]

• Mary Duane (b. 1762), who married Gen. William North (1755–1836) on October 14, 1787^[18]
• Catharine L. Duane^{[citation needed]}
• Adelia Duane (1765–1860), who married Alfred Sands Pell (1786–1831)^{[citation needed]}
• James Chatham Duane (1769–1842), who married Mary Ann Bowers (1773–1828)^[19]
• Cornelius Duane (1774-1781), who died young^[20]
• Sarah Duane (1775-1828),^[21] who married George W. Featherstonhaugh (1780–1866) on November 6, 1808^[22]

Duane's grandchildren included George W. Featherstonhaugh Jr. (1814–1900),^[22] Robert Livingston Pell (1811–1880), James Duane Pell (1813–1881), George W. Pell (1820–1896), and Richard Montgomery Pell (1822–1882).^{[citation needed]} His great-grandchildren included Alfred Duane Pell (1864–1937) and James Chatham Duane (1824–1897).^[19]

Throughout his life, he had worked to establish his own estate, inherited from his father, and centered at Duanesburg, New York.^{[citation needed]} He had started erecting a home there for himself, but did not live to see it completed.^{[citation needed]}

Duane Street in Manhattan was named in his honor.^[6] The Fire Department of New York operated a fireboat named James Duane from 1908 to 1959.^[23] The town of Duanesburg, New York, in the western part of Schenectady County, is named for James Duane, who held most of it as an original land grant.^[24][25]

• Burrows, Edwin G. and Wallace, Mike (1999). Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-195-11634-8.

• Alexander, Edward. Revolutionary Conservative: James Duane of New York; New York: AMS Press, 1978. ISBN 0-404-00321-4.
• Randall, Willard Sterne, 2011. Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, W.W. Norton & Co., New York and London, 617 pp.

• The Duane Family Papers 1700-1945 at the New York Historical Society

• United States Congress. "James Duane (id: D000508)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• James Duane at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
• Portrait of James Duane
• James Duane Historic Marker
• Gramercy Park's Hawk Gets a Name
• Know Your Mayors

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