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Biographical Sketches

	GUNNING BEDFORD, Jr. Delaware	Gunning Bedford, Jr.
Lawyer-jurist Bedford, one of the most outspoken delegates at the Convention and a small-State spokesman, was a Philadelphian who moved to Delaware. He bore arms in the War for Independence and served as a Delegate to the Continental Congress, attorney general of Delaware, and Federal judge.

Born in 1747 at Philadelphia, Bedford was reared there. The fifth of seven children, he was descended from a distinguished family that originally settled in Jamestown, Va. Usually he referred to himself as Gunning Bedford, Jr., to avoid confusion with his cousin and contemporary Delaware statesman and soldier, Col. Gunning Bedford.

In 1771 signer Bedford graduated with honors from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), where he was a roommate of James Madison. Apparently while still in school, Bedford wed Jane B. Parker, who was to bear at least one daughter. 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 Washing ton.

Following the war, Bedford figured prominently in the politics of his State and Nation. He sat in the 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. From 1784 to 1789 he was attorney general of Delaware.

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.

For another 2 years, Bedford continued as Delaware's attorney general. In 1789 Washington designated him as 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.

Bedford died at the age of 65 in 1812, and was buried in the First Presbyterian Churchyard in Wilmington. Later, when the cemetery was abandoned, his body was transferred to the Masonic Home, on the Lancaster Turnpike in Christiana Hundred, Del.

Drawing: Oil (1787) by Charles Willson Peale. Office of the Architect of the U.S. Capitol.