Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer

Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer (1723 – November 16, 1790) was a politician and a Founding Father of the United States. Born long before conflicts with Great Britain emerged, he was a leader for many years in Maryland's colonial government. However, when conflict arose with Great Britain, he embraced the Patriot cause.

Jenifer, born at Coates Retirement (now Ellerslie), an estate west of Port Tobacco in Charles County, Maryland, was the son of a slave owner, Dr. Daniel Jenifer, and Elizabeth Mason. As a young man, he acted as a receiver general, the local financial agent for the last two proprietors of Maryland.

He was the uncle of Thomas Stone, Michael J. Stone, and John Hoskins Stone.

Jenifer served as justice of the peace for Charles County and later for the western circuit of Maryland. He sat on a commission that settled a boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Delaware (1760) and on the Governor's Council, the upper house of the Maryland legislature that also served as the colony's court of appeals and as a board of senior advisers to the governor (1773–76).

Despite his close ties with the colonial government, Jenifer strongly resented what he and most of the colonial gentry saw as Parliament's arbitrary interference with the colonies' affairs, especially its laws concerning taxation and trade regulation. Years before the struggle for independence began, he had defended the proprietors of Maryland against those who sought to make Maryland a Royal colony. When the Revolution came, Jenifer lent his considerable support as a wealthy landowner to the Patriot cause, despite the fact that many leading Patriots had been his enemies in the proprietorship struggle. Jenifer became the president of Maryland's Council of Safety, the Patriot body established to organize Maryland's military forces for the Revolution (1775–77). When, in 1776, a new constitution was framed for the state of Maryland, Jenifer commented on the document's neglect of popular sovereignty: "The Senate does not appear to me to be a Child of the people at Large, and therefore will not be Supported by them longer than there Subsists the most perfect Union between the different Legislative branches."

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