 Brearly
(Brearley) was descended from a Yorkshire, England, family, one of
whose members migrated to New Jersey around 1680. Signer Brearly was
born in 1745 at Spring Grove near Trenton, was reared in the area,
and attended but did not graduate from the nearby College of New
Jersey (later Princeton). He chose law as a career and originally
practiced at Allentown, NJ. About 1767 he married Elizabeth Mullen.
Brearly avidly backed the Revolutionary cause. The
British arrested him for high treason, but a group of patriots freed
him. In 1776 he took part in the convention that drew up the state
constitution. During the War for Independence, he rose from a
captain to a colonel in the militia.
In 1779 Brearly was elected as chief justice of
the New Jersey supreme court, a position he held until 1789. He
presided over the precedent-setting case of Holmes v. Walton. His
decision, rendered in 1780, represented an early expression of the
principle of judicial review. The next year, the College of New
Jersey bestowed an honorary M.A. degree on him.
Brearly was 42 years of age when he
participated in the Constitutional Convention. Although he did not
rank among the leaders, he attended the sessions regularly. A
follower of Paterson, who introduced the New Jersey Plan, Brearly
opposed proportional representation of the states and favored one
vote for each of them in Congress. He also chaired the Committee on
Postponed Matters.
Brearly's subsequent career was short, for he
had only 3 years to live. He presided at the New Jersey convention
that ratified the Constitution in 1788, and served as a presidential
elector in 1789. That same year, President Washington appointed him
as a federal district judge, and he served in that capacity until
his death.
When free from his judicial duties, Brearly
devoted much energy to lodge and church affairs. He was one of the
leading members of the Masonic Order in New Jersey, as well as state
vice president of the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization of
former officers of the Revolutionary War. In addition, he served as
a delegate to the Episcopal General Conference (1786) and helped
write the church's prayer book. In 1783, following the death of his
first wife, he had married Elizabeth Higbee.
Brearly died in Trenton at the age of 45 in
1790. He was buried there at St. Michael's Episcopal Church. |
