Francis Dana

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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 Two Years Before the Mast. Dana died on April 25, 1811 at Cambridge, Massachusetts and is buried in the Old Cambridge Cemetery there.