Job Durfee

Job Durfee
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Rhode Island's at-large district
In office March 4, 1821 – March 3, 1825
Preceded by	Nathaniel Hazard
Succeeded by	Dutee Jerauld Pearce
36th Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court
In office March 4, 1835 – March 3, 1847
Preceded by	Samuel Eddy
Succeeded by	Richard W. Green
Personal details
Born	September 20, 1790 Tiverton, Rhode Island
Died	July 26, 1847 (aged 57) Tiverton, Rhode Island
Party	Democratic-Republican, Adams-Clay Republican
Alma mater	Brown University, 1813
Occupation	Lawyer, congressman, chief justice

Job Durfee (September 20, 1790 – July 26, 1847) was a politician and jurist from Rhode Island. Born at Tiverton, he graduated from Brown University in 1813 and was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Tiverton. He was a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives from 1816 to 1820, and was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Seventeenth Congress and was reelected as an Adams-Clay Republican to the Eighteenth Congress, serving from March 4, 1821, to March 3, 1825. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1824 to the Nineteenth Congress and for election in 1828 to the Twenty-first Congress; he was again a member of the State house of representatives from 1826 to 1829, serving as speaker from 1827 to 1829. He declined to be a candidate for reelection and resumed the practice of law; in May 1833 he was elected associate justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. He was chief justice from June 1835 until his death in Tiverton in 1847. As chief justice, he presided over the trial of the last person executed in Rhode Island, John Gordon. Durfee's interment was in the family burying ground at Quaker Neck, near Tiverton.

Durfee was the author of What Cheer, a poem in nine cantos; of an oration, The Influences of Scientific Discovery and Invention on Social and Political Progress, or Roger Williams in Exile (1843), under the pseudonym "Theaptes;" and of a philosophical work, entitled The Panidea (1846).

References

• Complete Works of Job Durfee, with a Memoir of his Life (Providence, 1849), edited by his son
• Gibson, Discourse on the Character and Writings of Chief Justice Durfee (Providence, 1848)
• United States Congress. "Job Durfee (id: D000568)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Job Durfee". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.