Historical 7.75x4.25 New York City document from 1789. It reads in part [portions are hard to dechiper] "City of New York Is Conserant to an Order of the Common Council of this Day py (out of the Revenue ? to Wyant Van Gandt the sum of twelve shillings for filling in the street at the Fly Market-Dated July 29 1789. By Order of the Common Council." Signed by James Duane in old ink as Mayor. Toning and minor wear. In excellent condition. (1733-1797) James Duane was an American Founding Father, attorney, jurist, and American Revolutionary leader from New York. He served as a delegate to the First Continental Congress, the Second Continental Congress, and the Congress of the Confederation, a New York state senator, the 44th Mayor of New York City, the 1st post-colonial Mayor of New York City, and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New York. Duane was a signatory of the Continental Association and the Articles of Confederation.He was a delegate to the New York Convention which ratified the United States Constitution in 1788. Duane was a member of the Federalist Party.Duane was a delegate to the First Continental Congress held in Philadelphia during the autumn of 1774 in reaction to the British Navy's blockade of Boston Harbor and the passage of the Intolerable Acts by Parliament in response to the December 1773 Boston Tea Party. He was one of the many who were most disposed to reconciliation with Britain and supported the Galloway Plan of Union, which was rejected by the majority of the delegates. Upon his return to New York, he was named to the Committee of Sixty, a committee of inspection formed in the City and County of New York (Manhattan, New York City) in 1775, to enforce the Continental Association, a boycott of British goods enacted by the First Continental Congress.He was a delegate to the Provincial Convention held in New York City on April 20, 1775, where delegates were elected to the Second Continental Congress. It included the delegates to the First Congress as well as five new members. The scope of the Provincial Convention did not extend beyond electing delegates, who dispersed on April 22, the day before news of the Battles of Lexington and Concord arrived. The Second Continental Congress convened its first session on May 10. Duane served as a delegate from 1775 to 1781. Alexander Hamilton, an aide to General George Washington, wrote Duane to ask him to get Congress to expedite supplies.The Committee of Sixty was replaced by a more representative Committee of One Hundred on May 1, 1775. The Committee still considered itself loyal to the British Crown but was opposed to the laws of the Parliament of Great Britain, which it considered unconstitutional because the colonies had no representation in it. The Committee of One Hundred was officially replaced by the New York Provincial Congress which first convened on May 23, 1775. Despite initial reservations regarding independence, he later supported the Declaration of Independence. Because of his service with the Provincial Congress, Duane was not in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration.[When the British occupied New York in the late summer of 1776, he withdrew his wife and family to the relative safety of her father's home at Livingston Manor. He was a member of the New York Constitutional Convention which assembled at White Plains, New York, on Sunday evening, July 10, 1776, for the purpose of drafting a constitution to replace the colonial charter.In July 1778 he signed the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia. Duane was a member of the Congress of the Confederation from 1781 to 1783. He remained active as a political leader throughout the war and returned home to Gramercy Seat in 1783. He commented that his home looked "as if they had been inhabited by wild beasts".He was Mayor of New York City from 1784 to 1789, appointed by the Council of Appointment. As mayor, one of Duane's first acts was to donate to the poor the money usually spent on entertainment for his inauguration, about 20 guineas. During his time in office, he strove to help the city revive itself after the damage done by the war and the British occupation, but he was unable to maintain the city's status as the capital of the United States. As head of the Mayor's Court, he heard the landmark case of Rutgers v. Waddington, handing down a Solomonic decision that pleased neither party. After he was called before the State Assembly to explain his thinking, he was censured by that body.He was a member of the New York State Senate from 1782 to 1785, and from 1788 to 1790. In 1785, Duane was one of 32 prominent New Yorkers who met to create the New York Manumission Society, which was intended to put pressure on the state of New York to abolish slavery, as every state in the north had done except New York and New Jersey.[18]He was chosen a member of the Annapolis Convention in 1786 but did not attend.Duane was nominated by President George Washington on September 25, 1789, to the United States District Court for the District of New York, to a new seat authorized by 1 Stat. 73. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on September 25, 1789, and received his commission on September 26, 1789.[6] He resigned on March 17, 1794, because of ill health.Comes with a full Letter of Authenticity from Todd Mueller Authentics.