On Aug. 21, 1822, Paul Fearing, the first practicing lawyer in the Northwest Territory and its first attorney general, died in Marietta.

Born in 1762 in Wareham, Mass., Fearing helped settle Marietta in 1788. Harvard educated, he was a member of the committee that established the first school in Marietta.

An act of Congress in 1795 provided that the Northwest Territory be represented before the General Court. Fearing was appointed to that position in 1799, receiving an annual salary of $400.

He was elected territorial delegate to the U.S. Congress in 1801 and kept that job until Ohio was admitted to the Union two years later. He was a delegate to the first Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1802, but he did not run for office in the new government. Instead, he returned to Marietta to practice law and raise fruit and stock.

Fearing was appointed associate judge of the court of common pleas in 1810 and master in chancery in 1814.

Rebecca Goodman

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com or call (513) 768-8361