Born in Ireland, brought to America as a child, and educated at the College of New Jersey

William Paterson (December 24, 1745 - September 9, 1806). Born in Ireland, brought to America as a child, and educated at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), William Paterson began his public life as a country lawyer and ended it as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. In the course of his career, he practiced law in the late 1760s and early 1770s in the Raritan Valley region of rural New Jersey; served in 1775 and 1776 as a delegate of the Somerset County freeholders to the New Jersey Provisional Congress as it debated the deterioration of relations with Great Britain; and was appointed attorney general of the new state of New Jersey in 1776. Twice selected to serve in the Continental Congress, Paterson declined both times, and after the Revolutionary War, he resigned as attorney general to resume his private law practice. He returned to public life when he was chosen by the state legislature in 1787 as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention to consider amending the Articles of Confederation. In Philadelphia, when the Convention changed course and began debating the replacement of the Articles by a new form of government, Paterson helped (delegates from Maryland and Connecticut) draft and present the "New Jersey Plan" which defended the interests of the "small" states by making representation in the proposed national government by state (as under the articles) rather than by population. When this proposal almost hopelessly divided the Convention, Paterson was among those who in committee worked out the so-called "Connecticut Compromise" (using state representation in the Senate and population in the House). In 1789, a joint session of the New Jersey legislature elected Paterson one of the state's first two United States Senators; as a Senator, Paterson helped Oliver Ellsworth draft the federal Judiciary Act of 1789. In 1791, after the death of Governor William Livingston, Paterson was elected the second governor of New Jersey and began the work of recodify the laws and reforming the state court system, an effort that continued even after George Washington appointed him in 1793 to the United States Supreme Court. He died on September 9, 1806.

Source: John E. O'Connor, William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman, 1745-1806 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1979)