Joshua Atherton


Joshua Atherton, son of Col. Peter Atherton and Experience Wright, was a lawyer and early anti-slavery campaigner in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Ancestry

Atherton was named after his grandfather; Joshua Atherton was a soldier in King Philip's War, under Captain Daniel Henchman of Boston. He returned to Lancaster in 1687, settling at Still River, Massachusetts, then part of Lancaster, where he was a farmer and tanner.
His great-grandfather James Atherton, arrived from England in the 1630s, and went to serve under Captain John Whiting’s Company. He went on to become one of the founders of Lancaster, MA. He died in Sherborn, Massachusetts, and is buried at the Old South Cemetery in Sherborn.
His great-grandfather on his maternal line was Samuel Wardwell, a carpenter, was who was charged with witchcraft in 1692, and was hung at Witch Hill, in Andover, Massachusetts.

Early Life

His father, Col. Peter Atherton was a blacksmith by trade, a farmer, magistrate. He also served in the Massachusetts Colonial Militia, then seen as a political position, rising to the rank of Colonel. The law in Massachusetts required all able men to keep a firearm and volunteer in the citizen army known as the militia. However the militia would fight alongside the British soldiers engaging the threats resulting from the French and Indian War during the mid-1700s. He went onto serve for a number of years as a member of the General Court, where he died in Jun 13th, 1764.
Atherton’s younger brother Dr. Israel Atherton, studied Medicine in Harvard College.
Atherton attended local schools in Worcester County and was tutored by the clergy. He was brought up to be farmer and was expected to follow his father’s footsteps and enter the lucrative blacksmithing trade. However Atherton was a sickly boy and was not considered suited to heavy labor. Instead he sought an education, he tutored younger children in order to pay towards college, running a local school in order to save for the tuition fees.
At the age of 21, Atherton went on to study law under James Putnam at Harvard College, graduating in 1762. He opened his first law practice in Petersham, Massachusetts, in 1765. Atherton was also a teacher at the time. He married Abigail Goss, the daughter of a Congregational Minister in 1765. Atherton then decided to move to New Hampshire, moving to Litchfield, then settled in Merrimack where he established a law practice from 1765 to 1773. He moved to Amherst, New Hampshire, became a farmer and was elected as the Register of Probate in Hillsborough County in 1773. He spent the remainder of his life in Amherst.

American Revolution

New Hampshire was one of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule during the American Revolution. Atherton at first joined the opponents to British rule, but refused to join the local Sons of Liberty, a secret revolutionary organization created to advance the rights of the colonists and fight taxation by the British government. Atherton then tried to remain neutral during the Revolution, believing the colonists could not win a war with England. The community was offended by his stance and had him arrested in 1777, jailing him in nearby Exeter, New Hampshire. As a result, he was fired from his position as register of probate and justice of the peace, and he resumed farming.
After taking an oath of allegiance to the new state of New Hampshire in 1779, Atherton started practicing law again. In 1782, he became the leader of the Amherst committee to help draft a state constitution. The next year, as a member of the New Hampshire state constitutional convention, he helped revise state laws, advocated for a bill of rights for citizens, and fought to settle former Loyalist land claims.

Notable speech at convention

In 1787 he was elected as a delegate to the convention in New Hampshire to ratify the federal constitution. He worked hard to defeat its ratification unless certain amendments were adopted. Atherton claimed it was poorly written; he insisted on a bill of rights to protect private beliefs and actions, and also defended the rights of town and state government against a too strong centralized government.
In February 1788, Atherton delivered a major speech in opposition to Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1, of the proposed constitution. The focal point of his speech was about the evils of slavery. Atherton asserted that the southern states had made him a "partaker in the sin and guilt of this abominable" traffic in the buying and selling of slaves, and that the "clause has not secured its abolition". He argued that "we will not lend the aid of our ratification to this cruel and inhumane merchandise, not even for a day". Atherton continued on with a vivid description of the conditions of slavery, proclaiming:
He voted against its adoption, on instructions from the town. The state finally ratified the constitution on June 21, 1788.

Later life

In 1791, Atherton was once again elected as justice of the peace, and was a member of the convention in Concord that drafted the new state constitution, revising the previous one of 1783. From 1792 to 1793, he was a member of the state senate, and after his resignation in 1793 from the senate, he was elected state attorney general that same year.
In 1798, he was elected commissioner of Hillsborough County. In 1803 he retired because of a heart ailment. After his retirement, he helped establish the Franklin Society in Amherst, a library dedicated to historical events that changed the state. He died of heart disease on April 3, 1809.

Descendants

His son Charles Humphrey Atherton, was a lawyer, banker and politician from New Hampshire who served as a United States Representative from New Hampshire and as a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives during the early 1800s. He published his fathers’ memoirs.
His daughter Mary Frances Atherton married William Gordon.
His grandson Charles Gordon Atherton was a Democratic Representative and Senator from New Hampshire. He was responsible for composing the gag rule of December 1838, known as the “Atherton Gag”, which stifled any petitions relating to slavery. In 1844 the House rescinded this gag rule on a motion made by John Quincy Adams. Whatever his reasons, Joshua Atherton, as an early ardent anti-slavery campaigner would have objected to this rule.