49 Fun Facts About Founding Fathers

Who commanded the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and later became the first US president?

George Washington led the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783 and then served two terms as the first president; he also presided over the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

Historian Richard B. Morris famously singled out how many 'key' Founding Fathers?

Richard B. Morris picked seven key figures in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, judging them on leadership, longevity and statesmanship.

Which three men negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War?

Franklin, Adams and Jay signed the definitive treaty in Paris on September 3, 1783; Franklin had been America's senior diplomat in France throughout the war.

Which two Founding Fathers died on the same day, July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration?

Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826; Adams's reported last words, 'Thomas Jefferson survives', were mistaken, as Jefferson had died about five hours earlier in Virginia.

The 55 delegates who attended the 1787 Constitutional Convention are commonly known by what term?

The Framers numbered 55 delegates in all, though only 39 of them signed the finished Constitution on September 17, 1787; three who stayed to the end refused to sign.

Which pamphleteer, author of Common Sense, is sometimes called the 'Father of the American Revolution'?

Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously in Philadelphia in January 1776; its plain-language case for independence made it the best-selling pamphlet of the Revolution.

Which 'Give me liberty or give me death!' orator skipped the Constitutional Convention as he 'smelt a rat'?

Patrick Henry, Virginia's first governor after independence, declined his seat at the 1787 Convention saying he 'smelt a rat', then led the Anti-Federalist fight against ratification in Virginia.

Who was the only person to sign the Continental Association, Declaration, Articles of Confederation and Constitution?

Roger Sherman of Connecticut signed all four documents; a former shoemaker, he also brokered the Connecticut Compromise at the 1787 Convention that gave every state two senators.

Which delegate wrote the Constitution's preamble and is nicknamed the "Penman of the Constitution"?

Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, on the Committee of Style, drafted the final wording including 'We the People of the United States'; he had lost a leg in a 1780 carriage accident.

Who alone signed the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution?

Benjamin Franklin signed all three and also the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, making him the only man whose name is on all four of those founding documents.

Under what pen name did Franklin write his famous almanack from 1732?

Richard Saunders was the fictional author of Poor Richard's Almanack, which Franklin printed every year from 1732 to 1758; a decade earlier he had written as the widow Silence Dogood.

Which of these was NOT one of Franklin's inventions?

The cotton gin was Eli Whitney's, patented in 1794; Franklin did invent the lightning rod, bifocals and the glass harmonica, and he founded Philadelphia's first volunteer fire company in 1736.

Roughly how many people attended Franklin's funeral in Philadelphia in 1790?

Some 20,000 mourners followed Franklin's coffin to Christ Church Burial Ground in April 1790, four days after his death on April 17.

Where was Alexander Hamilton born?

Charlestown, Nevis, in the British West Indies, was Hamilton's birthplace; born out of wedlock and orphaned young, he was sent as a teenager to the mainland colonies, where he studied at King's College, now Columbia.

How many of the 85 Federalist Papers did Alexander Hamilton write?

Hamilton wrote 51 of the 85 essays; Madison wrote 29 and the third author only five, having fallen ill after the first four of them.

Where did the fatal 1804 pistol duel that killed Hamilton take place?

Weehawken, New Jersey, on the Hudson shore opposite Manhattan, was the site of the July 11, 1804 duel; Hamilton was mortally wounded there and died the next day in New York.

Which financial institution did Alexander Hamilton found in 1784, before he became Treasury Secretary?

Bank of New York opened in 1784 under a constitution Hamilton drafted; it was the first bank in New York State, years before Hamilton's First Bank of the United States of 1791.

Under what collective pseudonym were The Federalist Papers published?

The name honoured Publius Valerius, a founder of the Roman republic; the first 77 essays ran in New York newspapers between October 1787 and April 1788.

Which Federalist Paper by Madison argues a large republic is the best guard against 'majority faction'?

No. 10, published in November 1787, argues that a large, extended republic dilutes factions by multiplying competing interests, so no single majority faction can easily combine to oppress the rest.

Which Founding Father was the first chief justice of the United States and later governor of New York?

John Jay was the first chief justice until 1795, negotiating the controversial 1794 Jay Treaty with Britain while in office, then served as governor of New York from 1795 to 1801.

What was James Madison's proposal that became the basis of the Constitutional Convention's debates?

The Virginia Plan, drafted by Madison and presented by Governor Edmund Randolph on May 29, 1787, proposed a bicameral legislature apportioned by population; the New Jersey Plan answered it for the small states.

On what date did James Madison introduce the Bill of Rights in the first Congress?

June 8, 1789 was the day Madison rose in the House to propose his amendments, distilled from some 200 suggested by state ratifying conventions; ten were ratified on December 15, 1791.

Where did James Madison study under John Witherspoon?

Princeton in New Jersey, then called the College of New Jersey, was where Madison graduated in 1771 and stayed on to study under its president, John Witherspoon, before returning to Montpelier in 1772.

Who formally introduced James Madison to his future wife Dolley Payne Todd in 1794?

Aaron Burr, a boarder at Dolley's mother's Philadelphia house, arranged the May 1794 meeting; the Quaker widow had lost her husband in the 1793 yellow fever epidemic and married Madison that September.

Which unpopular clients did lawyer John Adams successfully defend before the Revolution?

British soldiers charged over the Boston Massacre of March 1770 were defended by Adams; Captain Preston and six soldiers were acquitted, two were convicted only of manslaughter, and Adams later called it his finest service.

Adams was the primary author of which 1780 document that influenced the later federal charter?

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 was drafted almost entirely by Adams; its separation of powers into three branches and its declaration of rights were models for the 1787 federal charter.

Which president was the first to live in the White House?

John Adams moved into the unfinished President's House in the new federal city on November 1, 1800, with only four months left in his term; his predecessor never lived there.

Abigail Adams is remembered for a March 1776 letter urging her husband and Congress to do what?

'Remember the ladies' was her plea in a letter of March 31, 1776, warning that women would 'foment a rebellion' if they had no voice in the new code of laws.

Where was Thomas Jefferson born in 1743?

Shadwell Plantation, his father Peter Jefferson's farm in what is now Albemarle County, Virginia, was Jefferson's birthplace on April 13, 1743; Monticello, which he began in 1768, stands a few miles away.

Which of these is NOT among the three achievements on Jefferson's self-written epitaph?

President of the United States is missing by design: Jefferson's epitaph names only the Declaration, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the University of Virginia, the things he said he wished most to be remembered by.

For how much did Jefferson sell his library to rebuild the Library of Congress in 1815?

$23,950 was what Congress paid in 1815 for Jefferson's 6,487 volumes, replacing the collection British troops had burned with the Capitol in August 1814; he soon began buying books again.

Which instrument did Thomas Jefferson play, often accompanying his wife Martha at the piano?

Violin was Jefferson's instrument; he took it up as a boy, practised it for hours daily as a student in Williamsburg, and played duets with Martha, who played harpsichord and pianoforte.

Where did Washington take the oath of office at his first inauguration in 1789?

Federal Hall, New York City, on Wall Street, was where he took the oath on the building's balcony on April 30, 1789, in the seat of the first Congress; the capital moved to Philadelphia in 1790.

Contrary to legend, what were Washington's dentures made from instead of wood?

Metal, ivory, bone and human teeth went into his dentures: hippopotamus ivory plates, lead and brass fittings, and human and animal teeth; by the time he became president he had a single natural tooth left.

Which planned mutiny by unpaid Continental Army officers did Washington defuse in March 1783?

The Newburgh Conspiracy collapsed after Washington's March 15, 1783 address to his officers at Newburgh, New York, where he put on his spectacles and remarked that he had grown not only gray but almost blind in his country's service.

Young Washington's first profession, licensed by the College of William & Mary, was what?

Surveyor was his trade from age 17: in 1749 the College of William & Mary licensed him and, through Fairfax family patronage, he became official surveyor of Culpeper County without the usual apprenticeship.

Whose large, stylish signature on the Declaration of Independence made his name a byword for a signature?

John Hancock, as President of the Continental Congress, signed first and largest; British customs officials had seized his sloop Liberty in 1768 and charged him with smuggling Madeira wine.

Who were the youngest and oldest signers of the Declaration of Independence?

Edward Rutledge (26) and Benjamin Franklin (70) bracketed the signers' ages; Rutledge of South Carolina had moved to postpone the July 1 vote a day so the colonies could act unanimously.

Who physically wrote out (engrossed) the parchment Declaration that hangs in the National Archives?

Timothy Matlack, a clerk to Secretary Charles Thomson, is credited with penning the parchment; Congress ordered the engrossed copy on July 19 and most delegates signed it on August 2, 1776.

Which delegate rode through the night to break Delaware's tie and vote for independence?

Caesar Rodney rode some 70 miles from Dover through a stormy night of July 1-2, 1776, arriving in time to side with McKean against Read and carry Delaware for independence.

Who was the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, and its last surviving signer?

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a Maryland planter, was the lone Catholic among the 56 signers and outlived them all, dying in 1832 at 95; he was one of Maryland's first two US senators.

Which Virginian principally wrote the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights and later refused to sign the Constitution?

George Mason drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted June 12, 1776, and refused to sign the Constitution in 1787 largely because it lacked a bill of rights, which earned him the title 'Father of the Bill of Rights'.

Which state skipped the Constitutional Convention and was the last to ratify, in May 1790?

Rhode Island sent no delegates to Philadelphia in 1787 and ratified only on May 29, 1790, by a vote of 34 to 32, after the Senate threatened to treat it as a foreign nation.

Who chaired the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation, presented to Congress in July 1776?

John Dickinson of Pennsylvania led the committee of thirteen whose draft reached Congress on July 12, 1776; the final text was adopted in November 1777 and Maryland held out until 1781 over western land claims.

Which Philadelphia physician and Declaration signer became the 'father of American psychiatry'?

Benjamin Rush, a Pennsylvania signer, served as surgeon general of the Continental Army's Middle Department and in 1812 published the first American textbook on mental illness, earning his 'father of American psychiatry' title.

How many mourners attended the 1809 funeral of the author of Common Sense?

Six mourners, two of them Black, attended the June 1809 burial on his New Rochelle farm; his attacks on organised religion in The Age of Reason had cost him most of his friends.

Samuel Adams, founder of the Sons of Liberty, was what relation to President Adams?

His second cousin: the two Adamses shared a great-grandfather, Joseph Adams of Braintree; Samuel, 13 years the elder, had failed in business and as a Boston tax collector before turning to politics.

Which Committee of Five member later administered the presidential oath at the 1789 inauguration?

Robert R. Livingston of New York administered the oath as the state's chancellor, its highest judicial office; he later went to Paris as minister and, with James Monroe, negotiated the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Which future president introduced the phrase 'Founding Fathers' in a 1916 convention keynote speech?

Warren G. Harding, then a senator from Ohio, used 'founding fathers' in his keynote to the 1916 Republican National Convention and again in his March 1921 inaugural address, which popularised the term.