Person:Gunning Bedford (2)

[from find-a-Grave]

Bedford was born in 1747 at Philadelphia and reared there. The fifth of seven children, he was descended from a distinguished family that originally settled in Jamestown, Virginia. Graduated with honors from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), where he was a classmate of James Madison. After reading law with Joseph Read in Philadelphia, Bedford won admittance to the bar and set up a practice. Subsequently, he moved to Dover and then to Wilmington. He apparently served in the Continental Army, possibly as an aide to General Washington.

Following the war, he sat in the Delaware legislature, on the state council, and in the Continental Congress (1783-85). In the latter year, he was chosen as a delegate to the Annapolis Convention but for some reason did not attend. Attorney general of Delaware, 1784-89. Bedford numbered among the more active members of the Constitutional Convention, and he missed few sessions. A large and forceful man, he spoke on several occasions and was a member of the committee that drafted the Great Compromise. An ardent small-state advocate, he attacked the pretensions of the large states over the small and warned that the latter might be forced to seek foreign alliances unless their interests were accommodated. He attended the Delaware ratifying convention. One of five signers of the Constitution for Delaware.

In 1789 Washington named him a federal district judge for his state, an office he was to occupy for the rest of his life. His only other ventures into national politics came in 1789 and 1793, as a Federalist presidential elector. In the main, however, he spent his later years in judicial pursuits, in aiding Wilmington Academy, in fostering abolitionism, and in enjoying his Lombardy Hall farm. First grand master of the Grand Lodge AF&AM of Delaware.

Signers of the U.S. Constitution

Baldwin • Bassett • Gunning Bedford • Blair • William Blount • Brearley • Jacob Broom • Pierce Butler • Daniel Carroll • George Clymer • Jonathan Dayton • John Dickinson • Few • Thomas Fitzsimons • Ben Franklin • Nicholas Gilman • Nathaniel Gorham • Alexander Hamilton • Ingersoll • William Jackson • Daniel of St.Thomas Jenifer • Johnson • Rufus King • Langdon • William Livingston • James Madison • McHenry • Mifflin • Gouverneur Morris • Robert Morris • William Paterson •Charles Cotesworth Pinckney •Charles Pinckney • George Read • John Rutledge • Roger Sherman • Spaight • George Washington • Hugh Williamson • James Wilson

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Find A Grave.

   Gunning Bedford Originally interred in First Presbyterian Cemetery; reinterred 1921 at Masonic Home of Delaware; reinterred again in 2013.