John Beale Bordley

John Beale Bordley (February 11, 1727 Annapolis, Maryland – January 26, 1804 Philadelphia) was a Maryland planter and judge. Life He was the son of Thomas Bordley, from Yorkshire, England 1694, attorney general for Maryland, and his second wife Ariana Vanderheyden. A half-sister, through his mother's subsequent marriage to Edmund Jenings (1703-1756), was Ariana Jenings Randolph, the wife of prominent Virginia loyalist John Randolph, making Bordley the uncle of the first Attorney General of the United States, Edmund Randolph. He was educated at the library of his step brother, Stephan Hadley, At the age to ten, he went to live with his uncle in Chestertown. He received his early education under the direction of the Chestertown Free School teacher, Charles Peale. Colonial posts He married Margaret Chew, (June 29, 1735 – November 11, 1773), in 1750, and went to live at Joppa, Maryland, then the County Seat of Baltimore County. For the next 12 or 13 years he worked his plantation, and held the county clerkship. In 1768, he was one of the commissioners to help determine the boundary between Maryland and Delaware. On September 25, 1770, he was present at the Upper House of Assembly of Maryland. Later he moved to Baltimore City, where he was appointed a judge of the Provincial Court, and judge of the British Admiralty Court. He served as a member of Governor Horatio Sharpe's and Governor Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet, of Maryland's Councils.