Boundary Delegate

James Duane was a New York lawyer who served in a number of public posts before becoming a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1783. His wife was a member of the wealthy Livingston family and he had a lucrative practice in New York, with Trinity Church among his clients. He acquired some 64,000 acres in what is now Vermont and served on two occasions as a boundary commissioner. In 1784, he was named the first post-war Mayor of New York and under the rules of the Acts of Confederation, had to give up his seat in Congress. He did, however, take part in the New York-Massachusetts boundary discussions in Trenton. He resigned as mayor in 1789 to accept Washington's nomination as New York's first federal judge, retiring in 1794. He died three years later, while building his retirement home in Duanesburg, Schenectady County, N.Y. The 8-foot granite statue of him, by sculptor Philip Martiny, is on the right in this picture of the facade of New York City's Surrogates Court, originally known as the Hall of Records.

[credit: Smithsonian Institution Art Museum Inventory of American Sculpture]