Nathaniel Ropes

Nathaniel Ropes (c. 1726 – March 18, 1774) was a justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1772 to 1774. He was appointed by Governor Thomas Hutchinson.

Ropes graduated from Harvard University in 1745 with a degree in law and started out as a lawyer. He was a representative of Salem in the colonial legislature in 1760 and 1761, and served on the Governor’s Council from 1762 to 1768. He was also a judge on the Inferior Court of Common Pleas and a judge of probate until 1772, when he was appointed as a justice on the Superior Court of Judicature. In one of the traditional narratives, this event takes place in March 1774 when Ropes was on his deathbed with smallpox. The mob was supposedly a contributing factor as he died the following day.