The death of his beloved having left him bereft, John Read came to the American colonies and, with a view of diverting his mind, entered into extensive enterprises in Maryland and Delaware.

[3] Soon after his arrival in America, John Read purchased a large estate in Cecil County, Maryland, and founded with six associates the city of Charlestown on the headwaters of Chesapeake Bay, with the intention of creating a new market for the northern trade.

[3] As an original proprietor of Charlestown, John Read was appointed by the colonial legislature of Maryland one of the commissioners to lay it out and govern it.

In 1763 John Penn, the proprietary governor, appointed Read crown attorney general for the three Delaware counties, and he served in that position until leaving for the Continental Congress in 1774.

The minority Country Party was largely Ulster-Scot, centered in New Castle County, and quickly advocated independence from the British.

Read was often the leader of the Court party faction, and as such he generally worked in opposition to Caesar Rodney and his friend and neighbor Thomas McKean.

Read tried, mostly in vain, to recruit additional soldiers and to protect the state from raiders from Philadelphia and off ships in the Delaware River.

Because so few states were represented, this meeting produced only a report calling for a broader convention to be held in Philadelphia the next year.

With no one to support his motion, he settled for protecting the rights of the small states against the infringements of their larger, more populous neighbors who, he feared, would 'probably combine to swallow up the smaller ones by addition, division or impoverishment.'

He warned that Delaware 'would become at once a cipher in the union' if the principle of equal representation embodied in the New Jersey (small-state) Plan was not adopted and if the method of amendment in the Articles was not retained.

He resigned to accept an appointment as chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court and served in that capacity until his death.

Read's resignation from the Senate was before the first session of the Third Congress assembled, but it was not until February 7, 1795, four weeks before it adjourned, that Henry Latimer was elected to replace him.

Read died at New Castle on September 21, 1798, from heart problems and is buried there in the Immanuel Episcopal Church Cemetery.

He commanded entire confidence, not only from his profound legal knowledge, sound judgment, and impartial decisions but from his severe integrity and the purity of his private character."

However, a fellow delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 noted that "his legal abilities are said to be very great, but his powers of oratory are fatiguing and tiresome to the last degree; his voice is feeble and his articulation so bad that few can have patience to attend him."

Historians like John Monroe have generally recognized that all in all, Read was the dominating figure in Delaware politics during his career, directly or indirectly providing consistent and reliable leadership to the new state.

In the Broadway musical 1776, Read is portrayed in a minor role as a proper, conservative, somewhat effete, and wealthy planter who has difficulty getting along with the other two members of the Delaware contingent who are for Independence.

Duane Bodin[6] played the character in the original Broadway cast and Leo Leyden appeared in the film version.