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.

...