Mr. Christopher Taylor, Chair
c-taylor-1@northwestern.edu


Patrick James III -- Carl Sandburg High School

Samuel Willard -- Lakeland Union High School

Dr. John Ward -- McFarland High School

Henry Smith -- Hinsdale South High School

David Lee -- Trevor Day School

George Harold -- Hinsdale Central High School

John Pequot -- Niles West High School

Absalom Bryers -- St. Ignatius College Prep.

Nathaniel Thoroughfaire -- Middleton High School

Joseph Wier -- The Latin School of Chicago

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You are a wealthy plantation owner from Chatham County, Georgia. You grow a large amount of high quality cotton, and your have vested interest in maintaining peaceful relations with the British for the trade of your cotton. The majority of your cotton is sold to British spinning and weaving firms, and without their business, you face heavy losses on your land, slaves, and other labor. You see your business growing in the near future and have several large land purchases lined up for the expansion of your plantation. You also identify with the Anglican Church and have family living in New Castle. You have a wife, Henrietta James, and five children who live on your plantation in relative harmony. Your youngest child Susanna just turned 2.

You do disagree with the way that the British have been treating the colonists. You are an upstanding British citizen and deserve to be treated as such. But, you believe that the only way to properly resolve the conflicts and survive on this newly settled continent is to stay loyal to the crown.



You are a highly successful and prominent lawyer that practices law in Boston. Your home is in Taunton, Massachusetts, where your family has been established for decades. Your wealth and success in Boston is quite famous in the Massachusetts province and surpassed that of all other barristers in the area.

In political view, you are a conservative loyalist. You believe that the British monarchy and parliament are the only ways in which order can be maintained in the colonies. In Boston newspapers you have published letter stating that you believe the British Monarchy and Parliament to be the greatest form of government that the wisdom of experience and history has ever created. The colonies, as a possession of the British, must be subordinate. To argue that colonists are not represented in Parliament and therefore are not subject to Parliamentary law, would lead to chaos. It would imply that the colonists are loyal to a King of America or Kings of the individual colonies. But, no such kings and no such constitutions exist to make these forms of government possible.

You have made your views known in published letters, and you stand strongly for subordination to England.



You are a middle-aged, fairly successful doctor from Hyde Park, New York, where you live with your family and your parents in a charming home. Your father, the retired Oliver Ward, was a doctor as well. You live a very comfortable life outside of the political arena. Yet, the increasing clamor about conflict between the colonists and British has not left you unaffected. You have seen outwardly loyalist people in Boston chased out of taverns, and your family practice has been pressed to donate money towards the publishing of revolutionary pamphlets. You declined the request, but this refusal was met with distaste.

In your earlier years you served as a field doctor in the French and Indian war on the side of the British. Here, you saw the destructive capacity of war, and decided that you would never advocate war when it was not in self-defense. Thus, you find yourself in opposition to rebellion against British rule. Though the British do not treat the colonists perfectly, they defend the colonies from outside invasion. Though not a leader of the loyalists, you find yourself in sympathy with them.



You are a 40 year old Merchant originally from Newport, England. Your principal line of business is the trade of tea in the Boston area. You sell to aristocratic Bostonians and restaurants in the area. You have a wife, Cornelia, and two boys Jack and Andrew. You moved to the colonies in order to pursue new business ventures. The tea trade in England was very difficult to enter, and you though that a new colony full of British people would need a merchant to sell tea.

You love England as a nation, but living on the other side of the Atlantic has shone a new light on your native country. Through taxation and regulation of tea trade, your family’s livelihood has been put at risk multiple times. You are actively involved in local government, attending all town hall meetings, reading all political pamphlets, and contacting the colonial government to issue your complaints about import taxes and unfair trading laws.



Born in 1720 near Centreville, Maryland, you grew up on a family plantation being educated by private tutors. You married Cynthia Blackwell in 1741 and began an adult life on your plantation in Talbot County. Working as a planter, you also volunteered as a Justice of the Peace for Talbot County in the late 1740’s. And, in 1751, you were elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. You continue to represent Talbot County in the Maryland House of Delegates, and you were elected as Speaker of the House in 1773.

You lead a life of public service, and have a history of advocating revised relations with the British. Currently dissatisfied with Colonial-British relations, you find yourself increasingly in support of rebellion and independence. You see British treatment of the colonists, who you consider British citizens, as unjust. Thus, you publicly advocate the use of any necessary means to rectify the situation.



You were always a bright child, but you rarely applied yourself. Your parents forced you to try academia and then business, both of which you failed at. At nineteen you married Violet and soon had two sons. With the combined pressure of both your new family and the community as a whole, you finally got a career. You passed the bar and became a lawyer in Louisa County, Virginia. As a lawyer you presented cases in front of the House of Burgesses in favor of more broad suffrage and religious tolerance.

Eventually, your reputation in favor of greater rights translated into a general dislike for Great Britain. You were elected to the House of Burgesses, where you became one of the few members to go against what Great Britain. You have even suggested laws in Virginia that more than a few might consider treasonous in the Great Britain. You are an eloquent speaker who has finally applied yourself for your current cause.



Your family has been well-established in Rhode Island since your ancestors moved from Massachusetts in 1637. For several decades, the settlers were on good terms with Native tribes, which help to explain why your ancestry included some members of those tribes. You grew up in a wealthy household in Newport, where much of the family income came from long held investments. Like your brothers you are actively involved in merchant endeavors and trade. Your main focus is the trade of rum and molasses.

However, outside of your business ventures, you have an avid interest in the Mercury, the newspaper of Newport. After the Stamp Act, every newspaper you sold had to have an approved stamp, which could only be received through paying the British a tax. The tax was disastrous and though it was later repealed, it changed your impression of Great Britain. Your feelings are conflicting: on one side you are prospering off the trade of the British Empire, but on the other side you feel subjugated by the British in the same way that your ancestors felt subjugated by the Puritans of Massachusetts so many years ago.



Pennsylvania-Quaker want independence but wont fight. Your family has lived in the colony of Pennsylvania for generations. Though once they lived near the city of Philadelphia, your father moved you and your family farther from the city to Bucks County. Your father felt the ways of the city were inappropriate for your family’s strong Quaker beliefs. These beliefs are what define you to the present day.

Now you are a well established farmer. You have a wife, Eileen, which you met at a Quaker monthly meeting. What you have been noticing lately is the challenges that colonists are facing at the hands of George III. The Stamp tax was especially unfair, because you thought it unfair to tax documents of necessity like your own marriage license and will. Even now you hear word that more taxes and restrictive laws are being written. You wish you could do something about these injustices and you will attempt to do so through peaceful manner, but you must hold firm to your Quaker beliefs at the same time.



Born in Maryland, your father was a judge in the Court of Pleas. Though your family was only moderately wealthy, you were able to gain access to one of the best schools for law in the world. After your time at the school, which was in London, you came back to the colonies. You married a fellow Anglican, Elizabeth, and then established yourself as a lawyer on the Virginia side of the Potomac.

Like many of your colleagues, you too were upset about the Stamp Act due to its adverse affects on law: most of your papers required the expensive British stamp. Yet the complaints were heard by the crown and the tax was soon revoked. While you agree in principle that colonist should not be overly burdened, you understand the need of Great Britain to levy taxes. You believe in reconciliation but you believe that both the British and colonists like fellow Virginian, George Harold, must compromise.



Born into a family of high standing in London, you grew up with many luxuries like private tutors and extensive travel. At nineteen years old you married your wife Sherry. The next year you joined your father and uncles in the running of your family’s shipping firm. This business was extremely prosperous until a devastating earthquake occurred in Lisbon, Portugal. This was equally devastating to the family business which had extensive assets and ties to the region. By 1770, your family’s immense wealth had nearly completely disappeared. All that remained were the family landholdings near the edge of the wilderness in South Carolina.

Though you arrive and conduct business in Charleston, you devote much of your time to developing your land. Life out west is not easy. Travel is long and roads are near not existent. Incidents with the Cherokee are common place, some of which turn violent. You keep your strength through both your family, Sherry and your two children, and your religious faith in Judaism. While in Charleston you heard of the many wrongs done by the British and have taken on this cause. You have, in fact, just been elected to the colonial General Assembly.