"John Law was baptized in Milford, Connecticut, September 28, 1735, the youngest son of Governor Jonathan Law (Harv. 1695) of that town, by his fifth wife, Eunice, daughter of the Hon. John Hall, of Wallingford, and widow of Samuel Andrew (Yale 1711), of Milford. He was thus a brother of Richard Law (Yale 1751), and half-brother of Samuel Andrew (Yale 1739). His father died at the opening of his Sophomore year, and his mother married subsequently the father of his classmate Pitkin.
During the year 1754-55 he remained in New Haven, and officiated as College Butler.
He is supposed to have studied law, like his brother Richard, but in the campaign against Crown Point in 1756 he served as aide-de-camp and secretary to General Phineas Lyman (Yale 1738). In March, 1759, he was appointed a Commissary for the Colony government, to reside in Albany and superintend the transmission of supplies for Connecticut troops to the front in the Canada campaigns. After the close of the French war he appears to have remained in Albany, as a letter of his classmate and brother-in-law, Seth Pomeroy, written in January, 1766, to the Rev. Ezra Stiles, speaks of the writer and his wife as having recently visited their brother, 'poor Mr. Law,' in Albany, where he has spent almost three years in confinement,—presumably on account of mental derangement.
In the spring of 1770 he went to South Carolina. He landed in Charleston on April 4, and married on the 6th of the next month, Mary, widow of William Glover. He settled on a plantation near the city, but died there on the 16th of the following September, at the age of 35."
