Jan Bernd Bicker (1746–1812), son of a patrician family, was a lawyer and merchant banker. In 1769 he married Catharina Six, daughter of one of Amsterdam’s patrician families. The couple lived in a double canal house on the Herengracht and also owned a country house in Velsen. Bicker’s social career reached its highpoint when he was appointed Amsterdam city councillor in 1781 and governor of the colony of Surinam in 1782. Later Bicker’s life took another course due to troubled international relations. His sympathies with the Patriot movement forced him to resign as councillor in 1787. He left for Paris and then for Brussels. In 1795 he returned to Amsterdam, where he first became a member of the municipal council and then president of the National Assembly. With the revolution of 1798 he was removed from office and arrested, but in 1801 he returned to political life, when he was appointed a syndic of the National Court of Justice of the Batavian Republic.