Robert Treat Paine
“I prefer to be remembered for what I have done for others, not what others have done for me.”
Thomas Jefferson
Robert Treat Paine was another of the Declarations “forgotten fifty.” He attended the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration. Before the he became a lawyer after being a schoolteacher and trying the family business of preaching. His role was definitely that of part of the chorus.
Among his other accomplishments, he was the first Attorney General of Massachusetts after independence. But before you condemn the system for not remembering all of the signers, do you know who the Attorney General of your state is right now.
What this exercise is teaching me is that : Fame and historic honor are saved for a few. The rest (the forgotten fifty) attend and by attending contribute in relative obscurity.
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