John Jay

John Jay was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 12, 1745, the eighth child of his family. His father, Peter Jay (1704–1782), was a merchant trading with Europe and the West Indies and a vestryman of Trinity Church; his mother, Mary Anna Van Cortlandt (1705–1777), was of Dutch descent. His grandfather Augustus Jay (1665–1751) was a Huguenot from La Rochelle, France, who, after the family’s property was confiscated, moved to South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina (officially the State of South Carolina) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean bordering Georgia and North Carolina; its capital is Columbia and its most populous city is Charleston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 23, 1788, the eighth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 5,118,425.Open the full entry and then New York.⁠[1][2]

A smallpox epidemic in New York City had killed one of the family’s children and left two permanently blind, and the family moved to Rye in Westchester when John was about three months old. His mother taught him at home until he was eight; he then studied for three years in New Rochelle under the Huguenot pastor Pierre Stouppe, and in 1756 returned to Rye, where his mother and the instructor George Murray tutored him.⁠[2]

Jay entered King’s College, today’s Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University, formally Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754 by royal charter from King George II as King's College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York State and the fifth oldest in the United States. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 and adopted the university name and moved to Manhattan's Morningside Heights in 1896. It has 17 schools and four affiliated colleges, with 35,978 students enrolled in fall 2025. Legal scholar Jennifer L. Mnookin became president on July 1, 2026.Open the full entry, on August 29, 1760, graduated with the highest honors with a B.A. in 1764 and received an M.A. in 1767. After graduating he served a legal apprenticeship with Benjamin Kissam, living in Rye in 1765–1766 while lawyers were striking against the Stamp Act.⁠[2][3][4]

He was admitted to the New York bar in 1768 and practiced privately in New York City from 1768 to 1774; Robert R. Livingston was his law partner and close friend.⁠[4][3][5]

Jay began courting Sarah Livingston (1756–1802), a cousin of Robert R. Livingston, in the winter of 1772–73, and they married on April 28, 1774, at Liberty Hall, the Livingston family manor in Elizabeth, New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry.⁠[5]

In May 1774 Jay began political activity against British imperial regulations; he was a prominent member of the New York Committee of Correspondence and attended the First Continental Congress in 1774 and later the Second. In June 1775 he drafted the Olive Branch Petition to King George III, and in July 1775 he wrote an “Address to the People of Ireland.”⁠[6][4]

On November 3, 1775, New York’s Provincial Congress appointed him commander of the 2nd Regiment of the New York City Militia, though he never saw active service with it. Still favoring reconciliation with Britain in 1776, he left the Continental Congress rather than sign the Declaration of Independence; after its adoption he fully supported the cause.⁠[6][4]

Jay headed New York’s Committee for Detecting Conspiracies and drafted the state constitution, adopted by a convention at Kingston on April 20, 1777; at that convention he tried without success to include a provision phasing out slavery. In 1777–1778 he served as the first chief justice of New York’s Supreme Court of Judicature.⁠[6][7][3]

In 1778 he represented New York in the Second Continental Congress and was elected its president, serving until 1779.⁠[4][3]

Appointed minister plenipotentiary to Spain on September 29, 1779, Jay sailed that October on the frigate Confederacy, his first trip abroad. In Madrid he had limited success in obtaining military, political and financial support from the royal court, was never formally received, and left the post about May 20, 1782.⁠[8][9]

On June 15, 1781, Congress commissioned Jay, John AdamsJohn AdamsJohn Adams (1735–1826) was the first vice president (1789–1797) and the second president (1797–1801) of the United States. Earlier he served in the Continental Congress, was a signer of the Treaty of Paris and became the first American minister to Great Britain.Open the full entry, Benjamin FranklinBenjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was a printer, publisher, scientist, diplomat, and statesman of colonial North America and the founding era of the United States, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. In Philadelphia he ran the Pennsylvania Gazette and published Poor Richard’s Almanack, founded the first lending library in North America, and proposed the school that later became the University of Pennsylvania; known for his electrical experiments and inventions such as the lightning rod, he served as the first Postmaster General of the United States, took part in drafting the Declaration of Independence, signed the treaty between the United States and France while in France, and signed the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War.Open the full entry, Thomas JeffersonThomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. He had earlier been governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state and vice president.Open the full entry and others to negotiate peace with Britain; Jefferson declined. Jay arrived in Paris in June 1782 and led the negotiations while Franklin was ill for two months. The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783, formally ended the war with Britain, recognized American independence and set the Mississippi River as the western boundary.⁠[9]

Jay was appointed secretary of foreign affairs on May 7, 1784, learning of the appointment on his return to Congress. His appointment ended on March 4, 1789, when the government under the Constitution was organized, but he remained in charge of foreign relations, informally supervising the Department of Foreign Affairs created on July 27, 1789, and the Department of State from its renaming effective September 15, 1789, until Thomas Jefferson took office as Secretary of State on March 22, 1790.⁠[8][4]

Jay favored a stronger central government and backed the Constitution drafted at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787. With Alexander HamiltonAlexander HamiltonAlexander Hamilton (1755 or 1757–1804) was an American statesman, lawyer, and the first Secretary of the Treasury. He took part in founding the Bank of New York, co-wrote The Federalist Papers with James Madison and John Jay, and promoted policies on public credit, a national bank, and the development of manufacturing. In 1804, he died after being wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr.Open the full entry and James MadisonJames MadisonJames Madison (1751–1836) was the fourth president of the United States, serving from 1809 to 1817. He helped frame the Constitution, co-wrote The Federalist and guided the Bill of Rights through Congress, and earlier served as a U.S. representative and secretary of state.Open the full entry he wrote The Federalist, 85 essays published under the pseudonym Publius beginning in October 1787 in New York’s Independent Journal. Jay wrote Nos. 2–5, published between October 31 and November 10, 1787, and No. 64, published on March 7, 1788; a severe illness caused the gap.⁠[10]

In early spring 1788 he anonymously published the pamphlet “Address to the People of the State of New-York,” which the Columbia University Libraries exhibit judges more influential on New York opinion than The Federalist. At the state ratifying convention in Poughkeepsie from June 17 to July 26, 1788, Jay, Hamilton and Robert R. Livingston led the Federalists to victory over the Anti-Federalists led by Melancton Smith, George Clinton and Robert Yates.⁠[10]

On September 24, 1789, George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington (1732–1799) was the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. Earlier he commanded the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War and presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787.Open the full entry nominated Jay as Chief Justice of the United States, a seat created under the Judiciary Act of 1789; the Senate confirmed him on September 26, and his commission was issued the same day. Jay took his oaths on October 19, 1789, before Richard Morris, chief justice of New York, the date the Supreme Court of the United States counts as the start of his service.⁠[3][11][12]

The Judiciary Act of 1789 required the justices to ride circuit in three regions, the Eastern, Middle and Southern circuits. For the spring 1792 Eastern circuit, Jay traveled 913 miles through six states in 87 days, from April 15 to July 10.⁠[13]

After Britain and France went to war in 1793, Americans divided over which side to support. Fearing war with Britain, George Washington sided with Alexander Hamilton and in April 1794 sent Chief Justice Jay to London to negotiate. Representatives of the two countries signed the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, known as the Jay Treaty, on November 19, 1794.⁠[14][9]

Under the treaty Britain surrendered the northwestern posts it had already agreed to give up in 1783; the United States received most-favored-nation status in trade, though its access to the British West Indies was sharply restricted; and the Canada–Maine boundary, pre-revolutionary debts and British seizures of American ships were referred to arbitration. The Senate approved the treaty by a vote of 20 to 10 on June 24, 1795. The State Department’s Office of the Historian judges that the treaty was immensely unpopular with the American public but maintained peace with Britain and preserved American neutrality.⁠[14][15]

Jay was elected governor of New York while in London, and on June 29, 1795, he wrote to George Washington resigning as Chief Justice. He served two terms as governor, from 1795 to 1801.⁠[13][12][4]

On March 21, 1799, the New York legislature passed “An ACT for the gradual abolition of Slavery,” under which children born to enslaved mothers after July 4, 1799, would become free at age 28 for males and 25 for females; the Columbia University Libraries exhibit credits Jay with working behind the scenes for its passage. In December 1800 President John Adams asked Jay to return as Chief Justice, and Jay declined because of the hardships of circuit riding.⁠[7][13]

Jay retired in 1801 to his 750-acre property in Katonah, New York, to pursue commercial farming and horticulture, calling retirement “the most agreeable part of my life.” Sarah Livingston Jay had supervised construction of the house while he was in London in 1794–95; the couple had barely a year together in their new Bedford home before she died of illness on May 28, 1802, at the age of forty-five.⁠[16][5]

In 1807 Jay had the remains of his wife and his colonial ancestors reinterred at Rye, creating a private family cemetery, and chose a meadow there as his own burial place. He died in Bedford, New York, on May 17, 1829.⁠[2][3]

Jay and Sarah Livingston had six children: Peter Augustus (born 1776), Susan (born and died 1780), Maria (born 1782), Ann (born 1783), William (born 1789) and Sarah Louisa (born 1792). Peter Augustus accompanied his father on the 1794–95 mission to London.⁠[5][9]

Jay’s parents had ten children; his brother Peter and sister Anna Maricka were blind. The siblings who reached adulthood were Eve (1728–1810), Augustus (1730–1801), James (1732–1815), Peter (1734–1813), Anna Maricka (1737–1791) and Frederick (1747–1799). His parents had married on January 31, 1728.⁠[2][1]

Jay opposed slavery on legal, moral and religious grounds. After the war with Britain he helped form the New-York Manumission Society, became a member of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1792, and met the British abolitionist William Wilberforce in London in 1794, corresponding with him for decades.⁠[7]

Jay’s own household included enslaved people. On the 1779 voyage to Spain he bought a young man named Benoit in Martinique, and on March 21, 1784, in France, he drafted a conditional manumission requiring three more years of service. An inventory of November 8–9, 1798, lists six enslaved people, five at Bedford and one in New York City.⁠[7]

Jay’s house at Katonah and 62 acres are now a New York State Historic Site, the John Jay Homestead, supported by the Friends of John Jay Homestead. The National Portrait Gallery holds an oil portrait of Jay begun by Gilbert Stuart in 1784 and completed by John Trumbull by 1818.⁠[16][17]

The National Portrait Gallery’s text judges that Jay held more high offices than any other Founding Father and that George Washington valued his virtue and objectivity.⁠[16]

John Jay Homestead: Official website: https://johnjayhomestead.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

Supreme Court of the United States: Official website: https://www.supremecourt.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State: Official website: https://history.state.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]