Sewell, Jonathan Jr.

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: F. Murray Greenwood and James H. Lambert, “SEWELL (Sewall), JONATHAN,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/sewell_jonathan_7E.html
  • DCB profile:
    • Lawyer, musician, office holder, politician, author, and judge; baptized 6 June 1766 in Cambridge, Mass., son of Jonathan Sewall (Sewell) and Esther Quincy; d. 11 Nov. 1839 at Quebec.
    • Jonathan Sewell was born into a prominent and cultivated Massachusetts family and, with his younger brother, Stephen, grew up on the love and encouragement of his parents. His loyalist father, attorney general of the colony, earned the enmity of American patriots, and on 1 Sept. 1774 a terrified eight-year-old Jonathan witnessed the sack by a patriot mob of the family mansion in Cambridge.
    • Within a week the Sewalls moved to Boston; a year later they arrived in London. In 1778 the family settled in Bristol, where they adopted the English spelling of the family name, Sewell. Jonathan discovered a talent for the theatre, and his performance in a school play impressed the celebrated actress Sarah Siddons, who described him as “Dame Nature’s chosen son.”
    • In 1793 Governor Lord Dorchester [Guy Carleton] and Smith obtained Sewell’s appointment as solicitor general and inspector of the king’s domain.
    • After Monk’s elevation to the bench in 1794 Sewell prosecuted the unfinished cases – demonstrating considerable leniency, in accordance with Dorchester’s prudent policy of treating political offenders lightly. In 1795 Sewell took a leading role with Chief Justice William Osgoode and Montreal lawyer Arthur Davidson in successfully opposing legislation that would have opened the legal profession to unqualified persons. On 9 May 1795, Sewell was appointed attorney general and advocate general. He was named judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court in June 1796.
    • Order and the means of establishing it were the judicial and political objects of this loyalists’ son, traumatized early in life by mob disorder and later profoundly troubled by the seeming bloody chaos of the French revolution. Sewell feared the potential tyranny of the people unrestrained by religion, education, and the ownership of property. Neither the French language nor the French law disturbed him, for he mastered both, and he was not a religious bigot; but the Canadians in their masses, in their presumed ignorance and malleability at the hands of demagogues or priests, frightened him in their potential for revolution or despotism.
  • United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=7462
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/30620581/jonathan-sewell