Constitution Signer

Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer

Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, (1723 to November 16^th, 1790), was a politician and a Founding Father of the United States.

Jenifer was born in Charles County, Maryland and was the son of a colonial planter of Swedish and English descent.  As a young man, he acted as a receiver-general, the local financial agent for the last two proprietors of Maryland.

Jenifer served as justice of the peace for Charles County and later for the western circuit of Maryland.  He sat on a commission that settled a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland in 1760 and on the Governor’s Council, the upper house of the Maryland legislature that also served as the colony’s court of appeals and as a board of senior advisors to the governor between 1773 and 1776.

Jenifer strongly resented what he and most of the colonial gentry saw as Parliaments’ arbitrary interference with the colonies affairs, especially its laws concerning taxation and trade regulation.

He became the president of Maryland’s Council of Safety, the Patriot body established to organize Maryland’s military forces for the Revolution between1775-1777.  When in 1776, a new constitution was framed for the state of Maryland, Jenifer commented on the document’s neglect of popular sovereignty.  He represented his state in the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1782, while simultaneously serving as president of the state’s first senate (1777-80).  As manager of the state’s finances between 1782 and 1785, he drew on his experiences a landholder to help the state survive the critical postwar economic depression.

Like his old friend Benjamin Franklin, Jenifer enjoyed the status of elder statesman at the Convention.  Business experience gained while managing a large plantation had convinced him that an active central government was needed to ensure financial and commercial stability.  To that end, he favored a strong and permanent union of the states in which a Congress representing the people had the power to tax.

As one of the oldest delegates in the Constitutional Convention, he used his prestige to work for a strong and permanent union of the states.  Contemporaries noted his good humor and pleasant company.  Along with Benjamin Franklin, Jenifer used laughter to help reconcile the opposing views of the delegates and to formulate the compromises that made the Convention a success.  The Convention took place from May 25^th to September 17^th, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Although the Convention was purportedly intended only to revise the Articles of Confederation, the intention of many of its proponents, chief among them James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, was from the outset to create a new government rather than “fix” the existing one.  The delegates elected George Washington to preside over the convention.  The result of the Convention was the United States Constitution.  The Convention is one of the central events in the history of the Unite States.

After the Convention, Jenifer retired to Stepney, near Annapolis, where he died in 1790.  In his will, he passed nearly 16,000 acres to his nephew Daniel Jenifer and instructed him that all of his slaves were to be freed in six years after his death.

 References

1.                              ^ Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer's surname is Jenifer. According to Bro. C. Edward Quinn in Roots of the Republic: The Signers of the Constitution of the United States (Danbury, CT: Grolier Educational, 1996. p. 70.), the origin of Jenifer's unusual given name is unknown but it appears frequently in his family. His ancestors included great-grandfather Captain Daniel Jenifer (1637-1692/3) who was a loyalist sheriff in Accomack County, Virginia during Bacon's Rebellion and who later moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, grandfather Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer (1672-1730), and father, Dr. Daniel Jenifer (ca.1699-1729). Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer had a brother named Daniel Jenifer (1727-1795) who himself had two sons, one named Daniel of St. Thomas who died unmarried and one Dr. Daniel Jenifer (1756-1809). Dr. Daniel Jenifer in turn had sons named Daniel of St. Thomas (1789-1822) and Col. Daniel Jenifer (1791-1855; Congressman and ambassador). This Daniel Jenifer also had a son named Daniel and one named Daniel of St. Thomas (1814-1843).

2.                              ^ Papenfuse, Edward C., et al., "Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer (Jennifer)," in A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature 1635-1789, Vol. I, I-Z (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 485-486.

3.                              ^ "Maryland Historical Trust". Retreat, Charles County. Maryland Historical Trust. 2008-06-08. http://mht.maryland.gov/nr/NRDetail.aspx?HDID=1012&COUNTY=Charl....