Robert Treat Paine
Born: March 11, 1731
Died: May 11, 1814
Colony/State: Massachusetts
Occupation / Public Role: Lawyer, legislator, attorney general, judge
Contribution to the Founding Era: Delegate to the Continental Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, first Attorney General of Massachusetts, and later a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
Robert Treat Paine was born in Boston, Massachusetts, attended Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard College in 1749. Before settling into law, he briefly studied theology and served as a chaplain during the French and Indian War. He was admitted to the bar in the 1750s and later moved to Taunton, where he built his legal and political career.
Paine became known throughout the colonies in 1770 when he served as counsel for the prosecution in the Boston Massacre trials. That put him opposite John Adams, who defended the British soldiers. The case gave Paine a larger public profile and helped establish him as one of Massachusetts’s prominent Patriot lawyers.
He went on to serve in the First Continental Congress in 1774 and the Second Continental Congress, where he signed the Declaration of Independence as one of Massachusetts’s delegates. Although he is not as famous today as John Adams, Samuel Adams, or John Hancock, Paine was part of the core political leadership that carried Massachusetts through the Revolutionary era.
After independence, Paine remained deeply involved in public service. He became the first Attorney General of Massachusetts in 1777, helped shape the legal order of the new state, and later served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1790 until 1804. The Massachusetts Historical Society notes that his public career stretched for more than thirty years, from the Boston Massacre era through the early republic.
Robert Treat Paine died in Boston in 1814. He is one of those founding figures who tends to live in the shadow of louder names, but his résumé was no small potatoes: revolutionary lawyer, signer, attorney general, and high court justice. That is a pretty serious amount of Republic-building for one man.
Related Links
- Signers of the Declaration of Independence
- Declaration of Independence
- John Adams
- Samuel Adams
- John Hancock