Daggett, David, 1764-1851

David Daggett: Connecticut lawyer, jurist, politician; U.S. Senator, 1813-1819; Kent Professor of Law, Yale University, 1826-1848.

American jurist.

Lawyer, jurist, politician, U.S. Senator (1813-1819), and Kent Professor of Law, Yale University (1826-1848). Resident and mayor of New Haven, Conn.

http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=d000002

David Daggett: Connecticut lawyer, jurist, politician; U.S. Senator, 1813-1819; Kent Professor of Law, Yale University, 1826-1848.

David Daggett, Connecticut lawyer, politician, jurist, teacher, and author was born in Attleborough, Massachusetts on December 31, 1764, the sixth of nine children of Thomas and Sibulah (Stanley) Daggett.

After graduating from Yale in 1783, he supported himself by teaching in the Hopkins Grammar School, during which time he studied law under Charles Chauncey. In January 1786, he was admitted to the Connecticut bar. In October of 1791, he was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly from New Haven where he served continuously (the last three years as Speaker) until 1797, when he was elected to the Council. Daggett's tenure in the Council was marked, as was in fact his entire subsequent career, by those political principles which made him one of the prominent figures in the Federalist Party.

He retained his seat in the Council until his resignation in 1804. In 1805, he was again elected to the Assembly, serving until 1809, at which time he again became a member of the Council.

In June of 1811, he was appointed State's Attorney for New Haven County and in 1812 was a Presidential elector.

In May of 1813, Daggett was elected to the United States Senate as a Federalist where he pursued much the same course as the other New England Federalists as a defender of states' rights.

At the close of his senatorial term in 1819, he returned to New Haven and his law practice. In 1824, he was appointed an associate instructor in the Yale Law School and in 1826 as Kent Professor of Law, a post he held until 1848.

He also served as Associate Justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut from 1826 to 1832, when he was made Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of Errors, a position he held until 1834, when he reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy. He was also Mayor of the City of New Haven from 1828 to 1830.

On September 10, 1786, he married Wealthy Ann Munson, daughter of Dr. Eneas Munson of New Haven. Following her death on July 9, 1839, he married, May 4, 1840, Mary Lines, daughter of Capt. Major and Susanna (Mansfield) Lines.

David Daggett died on April 12, 1851, in his eighty-seventh year.