Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 3
I1 have a Cause depending before the Superior Court of Massachusetts Government on a rehearing order’d by the General Assembly respecting the Condemnation of the Ship Alfred. The Honble. Mr. Derby2 & Mr. Russell3 conduct this matter on my behalf & are possess’d of all the Evidence & Vouchers to assert my claim to the Ship & her freight. If you are so far disengag’d that you will undertake my Cause in conjunction with Mr. Whetmore4 who is already retain’d I Shall think myself happy in having your Services. The above mention’d Gentlemen will wait upon you with the Papers & do every thing proper on the Occasion. I am Sir Your most humble Servt.
John Wilcocks of Philadelphia, merchant, through his attorney, petitioned the Massachusetts General Court, Jan. 2, 1777, for a trial “at the next Superior Court, &c. in the middle-district, of the justice of the capture of the ship Alfred, and her appurtenances (lately taken by the private armed vessel called the Retaliation) which were at the last Maratime Court for the said district, decreed to be forfeited to the captors, &c.” The General Court ordered Wilcocks to notify Nathan Leach of Beverly, one of the owners of the brigantine Retaliation, and require him to show cause why the petition should not be granted (Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 52 pt. 2:210).
Richard Derby, Jr. (1736–1781), see above.
Probably Thomas Russell (1740–1796), a prominent Boston merchant who represented his native Charlestown in the state legislature and also served on the council (Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, 834).
William Wetmore (1749–1830), a 1770 graduate of Harvard, was admitted to the bar in 1774. He was representing Salem in the General Court at this time, but after the war divided his time between Boston, where he practiced law and later sat on the bench, and Maine, where his second wife’s family, the Waldos, controlled much real estate (
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates
, 17:447–451).