DANA, FRANCIS ( 1743-1811). An Ameri can statesman and jurist. He was horn in Charlestown, Mass.; graduated at Harvard in 1762; soon became prominent at the bar. and. as a Whig, in colonial politics: and from 1776 to 1780 was a member of the Executive Council of Massachusetts. He was elected to the Conti nental Congress in 1776, and from the first took a conspicuous part. in the work of that body. In 1778 he was made chairman of a committee appointed to draw up plans for the reorganiza tion of the army. and in the same year was a member of the committee of three to which the eenciliato•y proposals of Lord North were re ferred. He went abroad in September, 1779, as the official secretary of ,I(din Adams, recently appointed to negotiate a treaty of peace with ;real and, after spending some time in Paris and Amsterdam, was sent in March, 1781, as United States Minister to the Court of Saint Petersburg. Catharine persistently refused to
receive him as an accredited Minister, however. and in 1783 he returned to America. Ile was again elected to the Onitinent al Congress (1784), and in January, 1785. was appointed 'Justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. [n 1786 he was a delegate to the Annapolis Con lention (q.v.), and in the following year was also elected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, but was prevented by illness from attending. In the State Conven tion of 1788 he with Theophilus Par sons and John Hancock in securing the ratifica tion of the Federal Constitution by Massachu setts. He was Chief .Justice of the Massachu setts Supreme Court from 1791 to 1806, during which period he took no active part in State or national politics.