John Laurance

This long overdue biography of English-born N.Y. lawyer John Laurance (1760-1810) restores an important missing piece to the founding narrative of the U.S. It describes the middling Cornish emigre’s against-all-odds passage to Federalist America’s governing inner circle. Laurance spent 5 wartime years as Gen. Washington’s “courtroom Baron von Steuben” and was battlefield father of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate Corps. Never defeated for electoral office, Col. Laurance spoke as N.Y.C.’s post-war pr