Paul Dudley

Who was Paul Dudley?

Paul Dudley, Attorney-General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, was the son of colonial governor Joseph Dudley and grandson of one of the colony's founders, Thomas Dudley. Paul was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

After graduating from The Roxbury Latin School and then Harvard in 1690, he studied law at the Temple in London, and became attorney-general of Massachusetts. He was associate justice of the Superior Court of Judicature of that province from 1718 to 1745, and chief justice from 1745 until his death in January 1751/2.

He was a member of the Royal Society, to whose Transactions he contributed several valuable papers on the natural history of New England, as well as the founder of the Dudleian lectures on religion at Harvard University. He died in Roxbury, and is buried in the Eliot Burying Ground next to his father and grandfather. Dudley was an investor in the Equivalent Lands. Along with his brother, William, he was the first proprietor and namesake of Dudley, Massachusetts.