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Edward Shippen IV
Portrait of Shippen by Gilbert Stuart, 1796, National Gallery of Art
Born	(1729-02-16)February 16, 1729 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	April 15, 1806(1806-04-15) (aged 77) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Education	Middle Temple
Occupations	lawyer judge politician
Spouse	Margaret Francis ​ ​(m. 1753; died 1794)​
Children	9, including Peggy
Parent(s)	Edward Shippen III Sarah Plumley
Relatives	Edward Shippen (great-grandfather)

Edward Shippen (February 16, 1729 – April 15, 1806) was an American lawyer, judge, government official, and prominent figure in colonial and post-revolutionary Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His fourth daughter, Margaret Shippen, was the second wife of Benedict Arnold.

Early life

Shippen was born in Philadelphia, the son of merchant Edward Shippen III and, his first wife, Sarah Plumley. He learned law from Tench Francis, Pennsylvania's attorney general. He married his mentor's daughter Margaret Francis in 1753, with whom he had nine children. In 1748 he went to London to complete his law studies at the Middle Temple, and, after returning to Philadelphia, was admitted to the bar.

Career

He was appointed judge of the admiralty court in 1755. Three years later, he was elected to the city's common council. In 1762, he was appointed prothonotary of the supreme court, a post retained till the Revolution. He became a member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Council in 1770.

Shippen attempted to stay neutral in the American Revolution, hoping that the colonies and the mother country would be reconciled. He did not support the extension of royal authority and was therefore not a Loyalist, but he also opposed the radically democratic Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, which sought to reduce the hold on government by powerful families like the Shippens.

He received in 1790 an honorary LL.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, of which he was a trustee from 1791 until his death. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society.

In 1791, he was appointed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, serving with Jasper Yeates and Edward Burd, both kinsmen and former students. Shippen became chief justice in 1799. Shippen was impeached on flimsy political grounds on March 23, 1804 by the Democratic–Republican-led Pennsylvania House of Representatives alongside the other two Federalist justices of the Supreme Court, Thomas Smith and Jasper Yeates. The sole Democratic–Republican member of the court, who had been not in attendance on the day the court heard the case central to the impeachment, was not impeached. The justices were not removed, being acquitted in their impeachment trial before the Pennsylvania Senate in the vote held on January 28, 1805. The next year the Pennsylvania Senate acquitted him and his associates. Shippen retired to private life and died soon thereafter.

Personal life

On November 29, 1753, Shippen was married to Margaret Francis (1735–1794), a daughter of Tench Francis and Elizabeth Turbutt, at Christ Church in Philadelphia. Together, they were the parents of nine children:

• Elizabeth Shippen (1754–1828), who married her cousin Col. Edward Burd, son of Col. James Burd and Sarah Shippen, in 1778.
• Sarah Shippen (1756–1831), who married Thomas Lea, son of Eleanor and Thomas Lea of Dublin, Ireland, in 1787.
• Mary Shippen (b. 1757), who married, as his second wife, Dr. William McIlvaine of Burlington, New Jersey.
• Edward Shippen (1758–1809), a doctor married Elizabeth Juliana Footman, daughter of Eleanor and Thomas Footman, in 1785.
• Margaret "Peggy" Shippen (1760–1804), who married, as his second wife, Gen. Benedict Arnold V, son of Benedict Arnold III and Hannah Waterman King, in 1779; she died in London, England.
• John Francis Shippen (1762–1763), who died young.
• James Shippen (1766–1769), who also died young.

His wife died at Philadelphia on May 28, 1794. Shippen died in Philadelphia on April 15, 1806, at age 77.

Notes

1. ^ Randolph Shipley Klein. "Shippen, Edward IV"; American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000.
2. ^ Jordan, John Woolf (2004). Colonial And Revolutionary Families Of Pennsylvania. Genealogical Publishing Com. pp. 102–104. ISBN 978-0-8063-5239-8. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
3. ^ "Edward Shippen". archives.upenn.edu. University Archives and Records Center. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
4. Multiple sources:
   • Haverstick, Matthew H; Voss, Joshua J.; Vance, Shohin H.; Zimmer, Samantha G.; Notarianni, Francis G. (December 16, 2022). "IN THE COMMONWEALTH COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA No. 563 MD 2022 LARRY KRASNER, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF PHILADELPHIA, v. Petitioner, SENATOR KIM WARD, IN HER OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS INTERIM PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE OF THE SENATE, ET AL., Respondents. BRIEF OF RESPONDENT SENATOR KIM WARD IN OPPOSITION TO APPLICATION FOR SUMMARY RELIEF AND IN SUPPORT OF CROSS-APPLICATION FOR SUMMARY RELIEF" (PDF). Pennsylvania Courts. Retrieved 29 December 2022.
   • Meigs, William M. (1893). "Pennsylvania Politics Early in This Century". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 17 (4): 469–472. ISSN 0031-4587. JSTOR 20083561. Retrieved 29 December 2022.
   • Henderson, Elizabeth K. (1937). "The Attack on the Judiciary in Pennsylvania, 1800-1810". The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 61 (2): 114. ISSN 0031-4587. JSTOR 20087035. Retrieved 29 December 2022.
5. Fischer, David Hackett (14 March 1991). Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. Oxford University Press. pp. 466, 463, 563. ISBN 978-0-19-974253-0. Retrieved 15 April 2022.
6. ^ Whitmore, William Henry; Appleton, William Sumner (1867). The Heraldic Journal: Recording the Armorial Bearings and Genealogies of American Families. J.K. Wiggin, Publisher. pp. 15–17. Retrieved 15 April 2022.

References

• Genealogy at RootsWeb
• Randolph Shipley Klein, Portrait of an Early American Family: The Shippens of Pennsylvania Across Five Generations. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975.

External links

• Biographical sketch and portrait at the University of Pennsylvania
• Biography at Virtualology.com (under his great-grandfather, also Edward Shippen)
• Portrait by Robert Feke at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

v t e Chief justices of Pennsylvania
18th century	David Lloyd Jeremiah Langhorne James Logan William Allen Benjamin Chew Thomas McKean Edward Shippen IV
19th century	William Tilghman John Bannister Gibson Jeremiah S. Black Ellis Lewis Walter H. Lowrie George W. Woodward James Thompson John M. Read Daniel Agnew George Sharswood Ulysses Mercur Isaac G. Gordon Edward M. Paxson James P. Sterrett Henry Green J. Brewster McCollum
20th century	James T. Mitchell D. Newlin Fell J. Hay Brown Robert von Moschzisker Robert S. Frazer John W. Kephart William I. Schaffer George W. Maxey James B. Drew Horace Stern Charles Alvin Jones John C. Bell Jr. Benjamin R. Jones Michael J. Eagen Henry X. O'Brien Samuel J. Roberts Robert N. C. Nix Jr. John P. Flaherty Jr.
21st century	Stephen Zappala Sr. Ralph Cappy Ronald D. Castille Thomas G. Saylor Max Baer Debra Todd

• 1729 births
• 1806 deaths
• Members of the Pennsylvania Provincial Council
• Lawyers from Philadelphia
• People of Pennsylvania in the American Revolution
• 18th-century American lawyers
• Shippen family
• Chief justices of Pennsylvania
• People from colonial Pennsylvania
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• University of Pennsylvania people
• Politicians from Philadelphia
• United States judges impeached by state or territorial governments