1738-1798
Associate Justice of the New York Supreme Court of Judicature, 1798
John Cozine, born in 1738, was a New York City attorney. During the Revolutionary War, the Convention, aware of the danger posed to the records of the City and County of New York by the movement of the enemy into Westchester County, appointed Cozine as one of the Commissioners charged with gathering and removing the scattered papers “with all possible expedition,” and delivering them to Kingston, New York. The Commissioners were authorized to call for a military guard, “to attend the said records, in their removal”(Journal of the Convention, “Tuesday morning, October 15, 1776.”).
In the Federal Procession in Commemoration of the Adoption of the Constitution, the marchers of the Ninth Division were comprised of “The gentlemen of the bar in their robes, two and two, preceded by the sheriff and coroner. In the [center] of their body, the constitution of the United States, elegantly engrossed on vellum, and decorated with ribands, emblematical of the union, was borne by John Lawrence, Esq., counsellor at Law, supported by John Cozine and Robert Troop, Esqrs., counsellors at law. Ten students at law followed, singly, bearing in order the ratifications of the constitution by the several states as they came into the union. The rest two and two.”1
On February 4, 1786, John Cozine was appointed Attorney to the Common Council and on August 9, 1798, he was appointed an Associate Justice of the State of New York. He died on September 16, 1798, before taking his seat on the bench. His death is said to have been due to yellow fever.
Sources
Henry Barton Dawson. Westchester County, New York, during the American Revolution.
The American metropolis: from Knickerbocker days to the present, vol. 1, p 286.
Alfred Waldemar Herzog. The Medico-legal journal, vol. 23 by Medico-Legal Society of New York.
Endnote
1. Manual of the corporation of the City of New York (1856) (New York: The Council, 1842-1870.)