Lear was born on Hunking Street[1][2] in the seaport town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on September 19, 1762,[2] a fifth-generation American and the fifth generation of his family named Tobias.

[2] Instead of joining the Continental Army, as many of his contemporaries did, Lear attended Harvard College, beginning in 1779,[2] during the American Revolutionary War.

1791), but Polly died in the President's House in Philadelphia during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic that claimed around 5,000 people.

Lear was given the rank of colonel as chief aide to Washington, who had been reappointed by Congress to command the troops during a period when a French attack was feared.

He preferred to be addressed as Colonel Lear for the rest of his life despite the fact that the French never attacked by land and he never faced active duty.

Swaths of Washington's diary (especially sections during the presidency and the American Revolutionary War) and a few key letters were discovered missing about a year after their transfer to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, who had instead volunteered to write the biography.

Lear wrote Alexander Hamilton offering to suppress Washington documents: "There are as you well know among the several letters and papers many which every public and private consideration should withhold from further inspection."

Suspiciously, almost all the presidential diary entries are gone except for those that covered Washington's 1789 visit to Lear's family home in Portsmouth.

Albin Rollins, a Mount Vernon overseer, stated to a nephew of Washington that he had seen the letters and that the second round was so strong that it made the hair on his head rise and that a duel must surely follow.

[3] Jefferson appointed the financially struggling Lear to the potentially lucrative assignment of American commercial agent in Saint-Domingue at the start of his term of president.

However, with the Louisiana Purchase looming large for Jefferson, Lear was asked not to irritate the French commanders, and after a suggestion from James Madison, retreated back to Virginia.

[3] A year after returning to the U.S., in 1803, Jefferson appointed Lear, now 41, to be Consul General to the North African coast with the privilege of simultaneously conducting private business.

In a last-minute change, the Lears were reassigned to the USS Constitution, and the Philadelphia ended up being captured in the Mediterranean.

Lear became the primary negotiator for the crew's release in 1805 with the Treaty of Tripoli that ended the First Barbary War in which he was alleged to have mishandled the resolution.

Under James Madison, he was then appointed as a secretary to the War Department and moved to a location a few blocks from the White House.

Although it was known that he suffered severe headaches and stints of depression, as well as being vilified by the press, the specific reasons for his suicide are unknown.