Thomas Addis Emmet (24 April 1764 – 14 November 1827) was an Irish and American lawyer and politician. In Ireland, in the 1790s, he was a senior member of the Society of United Irishmen as it planned for an insurrection against the British Crown and Protestant Ascendancy. In American exile, he took up legal practice in New York, earned a reputation as a staunch abolitionist, and in 1812 to 1813 served as the state's Attorney General.
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Early life
Thomas Addis Emmet was born in the Hammond's Marsh area of Cork on 24 April 1764. He was a son of Dr. Robert Emmet from Tipperary town (later to become State Physician of Ireland) and Elizabeth Mason of County Cork, both of whose portraits are today displayed at Cork's Crawford Art Gallery. He was the elder brother of Robert Emmet, who was executed for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1803, becoming one of Ireland's most famous Republican martyrs. His sister, Mary Anne Holmes, held similar political beliefs.
Emmet was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and was a member of the committee of the College Historical Society. He later studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and was a pupil of Dugald Stewart in philosophy. After visiting the chief medical schools on the continent, he returned to Ireland in 1788; but the sudden death of his elder brother, Christopher Temple Emmet (1761–1788), a student of great distinction, induced him to follow the advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the law as a profession.