Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 01.djvu/252

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BAYARD.BAYARD.

of the provincial congress in 1744. In conjunction with a friend he fitted out a privateer, and his firm furnished many of the arms used by the patriots of the revolution. He was chosen colonel of one of the regiments raised in his city in 1775, and the following winter saw active service fighting at Brandywine. Germantown and Princeton, and received personal compliments from Washington for his bravery in battle. He served on the state board of war in 1777, and in the same year was made speaker of the state assembly, being re-elected in 1778. He was a member of the state revenue committee in 1780, the year following was chosen one of the supreme executive council, and in 1785 took his seat in the Continental Congress, which met in New York. At the close of the revolutionary war the losses he had sustained obliged him to sell his property in Cecil county, Md., and having ceased to do business in Philadelphia, he removed to New Jersey and settled at New Brunswick, where he was renowned for his generous hospitality. In 1790 he was chosen mayor of New Brunswick, and was afterwards presiding judge of Somerset county court of common pleas. For several years he was interested with others in the manufacture of cotton at Paterson, but retired from business in 1791. Colonel Bayard was thrice married: to Margaret Hodge, who died in 1780; to Mrs. Hodgson, widow of John Hodgson, who died in 1785; and to Johannah, sister of Gen. Anthony W. White, of New Brunswick. He was a consistent Federalist and somewhat of an aristocrat. He died in New Brunswick, N.J., Jan. 7, 1807.

BAYARD, Nicholas, colonial official, was born in Alphen, Holland, about 1644; son of Samuel Bayard, a rich merchant of Amsterdam, and after the death of his father came to America with his mother and his uncle, Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor of New Amsterdam, in 1647. Nicholas was educated by his mother, a cultivated woman of great natural ability. He was private secretary to his uncle, the governor, and about the same time was chosen clerk of the common council, and surveyor of the province. He took for his wife, in 1666, Judith Verlet, a sister of his mother's second husband, who had, in 1662, been imprisoned as a witch in Hartford, Conn. In 1673 Nicholas Bayard held office as secretary of the province, and when the English for the second time obtained possession of New York, in 1685, he was mayor of that city, and also sat in Governor Dongan's council, and framed the Dongan charter, granted in 1685. When Andros, the reinstated governor, came to New York in 1688, Bayard met and escorted him with a regiment of militia of which he was colonel. As a prominent personage in the governor's council and commander-in-chief of the militia, he inspired the insurrectionist Leisler with peculiar animosity, and when the rebellion which the latter headed was at its height. Bayard was compelled to flee for his life, taking refuge in Albany. Returning from Albany to visit his sick child, he was arrested and imprisoned, but was released on the arrival of Governor Sloughter, and made a councillor. Colonel Bayard was implicated in the Captain Kidd piracies, in connection with Lord Bellomont, the new governor. He went to England, where he proved himself guiltless of the imputation. Later, however, he narrowly escaped death, being accused by the followers of his old enemy, Leisler, of a scheme to establish popery and slavery in New York; he was found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death by Chief Justice Atwood, but at this crisis the wheel of fortune again revolved; King William died, the chief justice fled, and Colonel Bayard's position and property were restored to him. With Lieutenant Lodowick he wrote and published a "Journal of the Late Action of the French in Canada," of which only two copies of the original edition are preserved. It was republished in 1866. He died in New York city in 1707.

BAYARD, Richard Henry, statesman, was born at Wilmington, Del., Sept. 8, 1796; the eldest son of James Asheton Bayard, Federalist. After his graduation from Princeton, in 1814, he studied law and was admitted to practice in Wilmington. In 1836 he was elected to a seat in the U.S. senate, made vacant by the resignation of Arnold Naudam, and resigned September, 1839, to accept the chief justiceship of Delaware, being re-elected in December, 1839, for the full term, which he served out. His last public office was that of charge d'affaires at Brussels, which he held from 1850 to 1853. He married a grand-daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. He died in Philadelphia, Pa., March 4, 1868.

BAYARD, Samuel, jurist, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., Jan. 11, 1767; the fourth son of John and Margaret (Hodge) Bayard. After his graduation from Princeton college, in 1784, as valedictorian, he studied law and established an excellent practice in his native city. He became interested and prominent in politics, and was made clerk of the supreme court of the United States in 1791. From 1794 to 1798 he represented the United States government in London, as its agent, to prosecute American claims before the admiralty courts. Upon his return he practised law at New Rochelle, N.Y., receiving the appointment of presiding judge of Westchester county. From 1803 to 1806 he resided and practised in New York city, and the year after his removal to that city helped to establish the New York historical society. He also aided in the organization of the American Bible society and the New Jersey