Chase, Jeremiah Townley, 1748-1828

Jeremiah Townley Chase (May 23, 1748 – May 11, 1828) was an American lawyer, jurist, and land speculator from Annapolis, Maryland. He served as a delegate for Maryland in the Continental Congress of 1783 and 1784, and for many years was chief justice of the state’s court of appeals.

Born in Baltimore in the Colony of Maryland, Chase read law in his cousin Samuel Chase's office and was admitted to the bar of Anne Arundel County in 1771. Chase established a practice in both Annapolis and Baltimore, which he continued in Annapolis until 1791 with interruptions for public service. In 1773 Chase was elected to the Colonial House of Delegates. In 1774 he joined the prerevolutionary Maryland Committee of Correspondence for Baltimore and was elected to the revolutionary Annapolis Convention that created the state constitution of Maryland. In 1776 he attended the state's Constitutional Convention for Anne Arundel County. Under the new constitution he was elected to the House of Deputies in Baltimore from 1775 to 1777. In 1779, he was named a member of Maryland's Executive Council, which functioned as the upper house of the legislature, and he would serve there until 1783, and later from 1785 to 1788. Chase was also Mayor of Annapolis in 1783 and 1784. Those same years he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, which held sessions for those years in Annapolis.

In 1788 Chase was a delegate to the Maryland convention called to ratify the United States Constitution. He was among those opposed to its adoption, believing that a Bill of Rights should be included. At the 1788 state ratification convention he spoke against slavery being supported by a federal Constitution. He was one of 12 leaders who voted against the federal Constitution's ratification. Chase returned to state politics after the constitutional crisis. Despite his opposition to the Constitution, Chase was named as a justice in the state's General Court in 1789, serving for six years. He held the tax commissioner office of Anne Arundel County in 1788. As tax commissioner, together with Charles Ridgely and his cousin Samuel, he speculated in ex-Tory lands in Annapolis and the port of Baltimore. He also served in the Maryland State Senate in 1796, where he became a strong Republican in a Federalist state. In 1806, Chase was appointed chief justice of the Maryland Court of Appeals for the third district, serving there until his retirement in 1826.

Chase died in his Baltimore home and was buried in the City Cemetery, or St. Anne's Cemetery, in Annapolis.