Born in 1702 in Boston[4] to Richard Gridley (born 1684) and Rebecca Gridley, Jeremiah attended Harvard College (class of 1725); classmates included Mather Byles.[5] Gridley married Abigail Lewis around 1730. In the 1730s he edited The Weekly Rehearsal, a literary magazine.[6][7][8][9]
Gridley house (built 1740) in Brookline, Massachusetts, as it appeared in the 19th century
He practiced law in Boston. As a lawyer he trained John Adams, William Cushing, James Otis, Benjamin Pratt, and Oxenbridge Thacher.[10] In 1761 "he defended the 'writs of assistance,' for which the custom house officers had applied to the superior court, and which authorized them to enter houses under suspicion of obtaining smuggled goods, at their own discretion. Gridley had for an antagonist in this case the celebrated patriot, James Otis."[11]
"He was moderator of the town of Brookline 1759, 1760, and 1761, ... representative to the General Court for 1755, 1756, and 1757, and Attorney General in 1767."[12][13][14] He also belonged to the Boston Marine Society.[15]
Weekly Rehearsal, edited by Gridley, printed by Thomas Fleet in Boston, 1731
^History of Saint John's Lodge, of Boston, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as shown in the records of the First Lodge, the Second Lodge, the Third Lodge, the Rising Sun Lodge, the Masters' Lodge, Saint John's Lodge, the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge. Boston, Privately printed, 1917; p.19-20. Google books.
^Isaiah Thomas, Benjamin Franklin Thomas. The history of printing in America: with a biography of printers, and an account of newspapers, Volume 1. J. Munsell, printer, 1874
^Charles E. Clark. Boston and the Nurturing of Newspapers: Dimensions of the Cradle, 1690–1741. New England Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 243-271
^Charles Warren. A History of the American Bar. Little, Brown, and Co., 1911; p.81
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