On their website, www.americanancestors.org, the New England Historic Genealogical Society has an interesting article about Dummer in the Harvard section of a database called Colonial Collegians. From this article, I learned that “except for cutting a few classes, he was a model undergraduate.” After his marriage to Mary Staniford in December 1757, they moved to Ipswich and Dummer opened a store and practiced law on the side. He served in the community as a feoffee of the Ipswich Grammar School (I had to look that word up and Wikipedia informed me that “in Ipswich, Massachusetts, the Feoffees of the Grammar School have been trustees for a piece of land deeded to the town since the 1600s.
The modern equivalent of a feoffee to uses is the trustee, one who holds a legal and managerial ownership in trust for the enjoyment of the beneficiary.”) Dummer was a justice of the peace for Essex County and by 1775 he was sent to the Provincial Congress where he took an active part. Then in 1779 he was sent by the town to the Constitutional Convention. It was in 1784 that he was elcted to the board of trustees of Dummer Academy. (Another sidetrack to check the history of Dummer Academy. It is still in existence under the new name of The Governor's Academy. See http://en.wikipedia.ore/wiki/The_Governor's_Academy ) Dummer's life came to a sad end in October 1788 when the Ipswich First Church Records states: “20th. D. J. being in a melancholly desparing State of Mind leap'd out of his garret window, which was about 30 feet from the Ground..” Within a week he had died from his injuries. So far I have been unable to find any record about his burial.
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