Joseph Galloway

Joseph Galloway (1731 – August 29, 1803 ) was an American attorney and a leading political figure in the events immediately preceding the founding of the United States in the late 18th-century. As a staunch opponent of American independence, he would become one of the most prominent Loyalists in North America during the early part of the Revolutionary War.

The son of a wealthy landowner, Galloway became close friends with Benjamin Franklin through his law studies in the late 1740s. His association with Franklin and his father-in-law's relationship with the Penn family drew him into the political drama then unfolding in the American colonies. Galloway was elected to the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly in 1756 when he was just 25. He would go on to serve for 18 years, eight of them as assembly speaker. With the capture of Philadelphia in September 1777, Howe appointed Galloway to govern the city as Superintendent of both Police and Port. Galloway was a fourth generation Marylander, his Quaker forebears arriving in the colonies in 1649. In 1740, he moved with his father to Pennsylvania where he received a liberal schooling. and he was admitted to the bar and began to practice law in Philadelphia.

On October 18, 1753, Galloway married Grace Growdon. In doing so, he relinquished his place in the Quaker faith. Her father, Laurence Growdon, was even wealthier than the Galloways and well placed in the political and social lives of Philadelphia. Both Galloway and his wife had strong personalities, and consequently, theirs was an unhappy union. He was a prominent member of the faction which opposed Pennsylvania being a proprietary colony of the Penn family, and he called for it to be turned into a crown colony. He was a Loyalist, believing that most Americans would prefer to remain loyal to the Crown if only they were given a legitimate and effective government that would inspire their loyalty. In 1768, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society, which Franklin founded, and served as vice president of the organization from 1769 to 1776. reprimanding Congress for ignoring his analysis of Parliament's powers and colonial rights. He proposed a written constitution and joint legislature for the whole British Empire.

American War of Independence In 1775, the Assembly rejected Galloway's urging that it abandon its struggle for independence from Britain, so Galloway left the Assembly and the Congress. In the winter of 1777, he joined General William Howe and accompanied him on his Philadelphia campaign. During the British occupation of Philadelphia, he was appointed superintendent of police and headed the civil government.

Exile in Britain In 1778, he fled to Britain with his daughter Elizabeth, never to return to the United States. There, he would become a leading spokesman of American Loyalists in London. The General Assembly of Pennsylvania convicted him of high treason and confiscated his estates, which included Trevose Manor, now known as Growdon Mansion, and much of the land that is now Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania. When Galloway fled Philadelphia with the British, his wife Grace remained in the city with the hope of retaining the rights of their property (her ancestral property). They expected that she would be able to join her daughter and husband afterwards, but Charles Willson Peale evicted her.

Galloway was influential in convincing the British that a vast reservoir of Loyalist support could be tapped by British initiatives, thus setting up the British invasion of the American South. After the war, he spent his remaining years in religious studies and writing.