Prior to his retirement, the late Jedediah Mannis had more than thirty years of legal experience as a member of the Massachusetts Bar. His practice emphasized administrative, real estate, zoning, subdivision and environmental law, with a special emphasis on limited development and land preservation.
Mr. Mannis also did appellate work before the Massachusetts Appellate Court and maintained an active motions and administrative law practice. He appeared before planning boards, conservation commissions and other municipal boards and agencies in more than thirty towns. His clients included homeowners, citizen advocates and other individuals, small corporations and general and limited partnerships.
Mr. Mannis also served for many years as the executive director of the Shelter Island Fund, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of forest land, wildlife habitats, wetlands and other environmentally sensitive open space through the limited development of otherwise fully developable land.
He graduated from Yale Law School in 1969 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 2004. He is the author of Bound to be a Soldier: The Civil War Letters of James T. Miller. (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 2001), Biography of Rev. Joseph Tuckerman, Unitarian Universalist Biographical Dictionary, and Joseph Tuckerman and the Outdoor Church (Seattle, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009). He was an adjunct instructor in theology at the Boston University School of Theology.