96 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 Americans signed the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War?

Franklin, Adams and Jay signed for the United States in Paris on September 3, 1783; Jay had hurried things along by telling the British he would deal with them directly, bypassing France and Spain.

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 several 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 writer's anonymous 1776 pamphlet Common Sense made the plain-spoken case for American independence?

Thomas Paine had been in America barely over a year: he arrived from England in late 1774 with a letter of introduction from Franklin and found work as a journalist.

Which 'Give me liberty or give me death!' orator refused a seat at the 1787 Constitutional Convention?

Patrick Henry was chosen as a delegate but declined to go; asked why, he is said to have replied, 'I smelt a rat', and he then led Virginia's fight against ratification.

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

Roger Sherman, who started out as a cobbler, signed all four; at the 1787 Convention he also drove the Connecticut Compromise that gave every state an equal voice in the Senate.

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

Gouverneur Morris polished the final text for the Committee of Style and is credited with turning 'We, the People of the States' into 'We, the People of the United States'.

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, the 'Poor Richard' of the title, opened the first almanack by predicting the death of rival almanac-maker Titan Leeds, then insisted Leeds really had died when he objected.

Which type of eyeglasses is Franklin generally credited with inventing?

Bifocals let Franklin see near and far through one frame; by one account he had his lenses cut in half so that he could watch French speakers' lips at court.

Which musical instrument did Franklin invent in 1761?

The glass harmonica is played by touching wet fingers to glass bowls spinning on a rod; Franklin, then living in London, devised it after hearing a performance on water-tuned glasses.

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.

Which newspaper did Hamilton found in 1801?

The New York Post began as the New-York Evening Post, which Hamilton launched with fellow Federalists dismayed by Jefferson's election as president.

Where did Hamilton fight the 1804 pistol duel that cost him his life?

Weehawken, New Jersey, was a popular duelling ground below the Palisades cliffs; both men were rowed across the Hudson from Manhattan at dawn, and Hamilton died of his wound the next day.

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

Bank of New York opened in 1784 with Hamilton among its founders; five years later, as Treasury Secretary, he arranged for it to make the new federal government its first loan.

Under what shared pen name did the authors of The Federalist Papers write?

Publius was the shared pen name of Hamilton, Madison and Jay, who wrote the 85 essays for New York newspapers to persuade the state to ratify the Constitution.

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 left the court in 1795 to become governor of New York, and when he was offered the chief justiceship again in 1800 he turned it down, so the seat went to John Marshall.

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.

Where did James Madison study under John Witherspoon?

Princeton in New Jersey, then the College of New Jersey, was an unusual choice: most young Virginians of his class went to William & Mary, but Madison went north and stayed on after graduating in 1771.

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

Aaron Burr, who had lodged at her mother's Philadelphia boarding house, made the introduction in May 1794; marrying the non-Quaker Madison that September got Dolley expelled from the Society of Friends.

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

British soldiers charged over the Boston Massacre of 1770 got a fair trial thanks to Adams: Captain Preston and six of his men were acquitted, and two convicted of manslaughter escaped with branded thumbs.

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

The Massachusetts Constitution replaced a draft that voters had thrown out in 1778; the new convention's drafting committee left the job to Adams alone, a 'sub-sub committee of one', as he put it.

Which office did John Adams call 'the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived' while he held it?

Vice President Adams wrote that to Abigail in December 1793; senators had dubbed him 'His Rotundity' when he pressed in 1789 for grander titles for the president.

In a March 1776 letter, Abigail Adams urged her husband and Congress to do what as they drafted new laws?

'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.

What did Jefferson sell to Congress for $23,950 in 1815, after British troops burned the Capitol?

His book collection of 6,487 volumes restarted the Library of Congress, more than doubling what the fire had destroyed; declaring 'I cannot live without books', he promptly began buying more.

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

Violin practice paid off: the young Jefferson reportedly played well enough to join weekly concerts at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, and at home he accompanied Martha, a skilled keyboard player.

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

Federal Hall, New York City, then the seat of Congress, hosted the oath on its balcony; the Bible was borrowed in haste from a local Masonic lodge and simply opened at random.

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

Metal, ivory, bone and human teeth all went into his dentures, never wood; the myth may have begun because the hippopotamus ivory stained with age until it looked like wood.

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

The Newburgh Conspiracy collapsed on March 15, 1783, when Washington met his officers at their camp near Newburgh, 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.

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

John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, signed top and centre in an outsized hand; years earlier British customs men had seized his sloop Liberty and accused him of smuggling, charges later dropped.

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.

Which clerk is credited with hand-lettering the parchment Declaration of Independence now in the National Archives?

Timothy Matlack, an assistant to Congress's secretary Charles Thomson, was probably the penman; he had already written out Washington's commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

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

Caesar Rodney rode from Dover through a stormy night on July 1-2, 1776, arriving 'in his boots and spurs' just 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 had been barred from public office in Maryland as a Catholic; elected on July 4, 1776, he came too late to vote for independence but signed anyway and outlived every other signer.

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 on June 12, 1776, then refused to sign the Constitution mainly because it had no such declaration; the Bill of Rights later drew on his text.

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, once Congress threatened to treat it as a foreign country and tax its exports.

Which Pennsylvanian, who refused to sign the Declaration of Independence, chaired the committee that drafted the Articles of Confederation?

John Dickinson, author of the Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, abstained on independence and would not sign, yet he was asked to draft the Articles, which Maryland held up until 1781 over western land claims.

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

Benjamin Rush wrote the first American textbook on mental illness in 1812 and pressed for humane care on the psychiatric ward at Pennsylvania Hospital; in the war he had been an army surgeon general.

Samuel Adams, a leader of Boston's Sons of Liberty, was what relation to President John Adams?

His second cousin, in fact: Samuel, 13 years the elder, had failed as a businessman and as a tax collector before finding his calling in 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 is credited with coining the phrase 'Founding Fathers' in a 1916 convention keynote speech?

Warren G. Harding, then an Ohio senator, used it in his keynote to the 1916 Republican convention and again in his 1921 inaugural address, so the famous label is barely a century old.

In a 1784 letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin called the bald eagle a coward and praised which bird instead?

The turkey won Franklin's praise only in private: the letter was really mocking the eagle on a veterans' society badge, and he never proposed it as a national symbol.

George Washington's Mount Vernon distillery, one of the largest in America by 1799, turned out which spirit?

Whiskey flowed from the distillery at 11,000 gallons a year by 1799, making it one of Washington's most successful businesses in the final year of his life.

Which sport's international hall of fame honors Benjamin Franklin, who made wooden hand paddles for it as a boy?

Swimming was a lifelong passion for Franklin, who in 1726 swam about three and a half miles down the Thames, performing tricks along the way.

Benjamin Franklin was born on Milk Street in 1706 in which colonial city, which he fled at 17?

Boston lost Franklin when he walked out on an apprenticeship under his older brother without permission, which made him a fugitive.

Thomas Jefferson served which baked pasta dish at an 1802 state dinner, where a guest described it as a pie?

Macaroni and cheese failed to impress the guest who recorded the menu, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler, though a recipe for it reached a Virginia cookbook by 1824.

Benjamin Franklin's 1754 cartoon urging the American colonies to unite showed which animal cut into eight pieces?

A snake suited the message because of a superstition that a cut-up one would come back to life if its pieces were rejoined before sunset.

In a tale traced to biographer Parson Weems, young George Washington confessed to hacking which kind of tree?

Cherry dishes became the way many Americans marked Washington's February 22 birthday, a sign of how deeply the hatchet tale took hold.

Which Virginia home, designed by Thomas Jefferson himself, has appeared on the back of the US nickel since 1938?

Monticello sits on an 850-foot peak and takes its name from the Italian for little mountain; Jefferson kept remodeling it through most of his presidency.

Which icy river did George Washington's army cross on Christmas night 1776 to surprise Hessian troops at Trenton?

The Delaware crossing left Washington about 2,400 men for the attack, because other columns meant to cross that night were called off or failed.

Benjamin Franklin, who was never president, has appeared since 1914 on which denomination of US paper money?

The $100 bill is informally called a Benjamin because of his portrait, and its design also shows a quill pen and an inkwell.

At which winter encampment of 1777–78 did George Washington's army lose up to 2,000 men to disease, not battle?

Valley Forge is also where the Prussian-born Baron von Steuben drilled the survivors into a more disciplined and efficient army in 1778.

Which 1803 deal, struck by President Thomas Jefferson for $15 million, nearly doubled the size of the United States?

The Louisiana Purchase cost roughly $18 per square mile, and Napoleon sold because a failed campaign in Saint-Domingue and a looming war with Britain had ended his American plans.

The Declaration of Independence lists 27 grievances against which British monarch, who reigned for nearly 60 years?

King George III proclaimed the colonies to be in open rebellion in August 1775, almost a year before the Declaration listed its charges against him.

The 1776 Declaration and the 1787 Constitution were both debated and adopted in which Philadelphia building?

Independence Hall was completed in 1753 as the Pennsylvania State House, and only later took the name that honors what was decided inside.

George Washington's Farewell Address, published in a newspaper in 1796, warned of the dangers of which institutions?

Political parties were already forming around Jefferson and Hamilton, two veterans of his own cabinet, when Washington warned that such groups chase power and take revenge on opponents.

Benjamin Franklin learned which trade as his brother's apprentice and retired from it a very wealthy man in his forties?

Printing kept paying Franklin long after he stepped back: a partnership with his foreman gave him half of the shop's profits for 18 years.

Benjamin Franklin's 1752 kite experiment, with a house key tied to the string, set out to show lightning is what?

Electricity showed itself as a spark when Franklin brought his hand near the key; the next year a scientist in Saint Petersburg was killed trying to repeat his lightning work.

George Washington and Benjamin Franklin both joined which fraternal society, in which Franklin rose to grand master?

The Freemasons had counted Washington as a member since 1752, and he swore his first presidential oath on a Bible fetched from a nearby lodge when none had been provided.

Thomas Jefferson came home from Paris in 1789 and soon joined George Washington's first cabinet in which post?

Secretary of State was a job Jefferson gave up in December 1793, hoping to return to private life after years inside the administration.

Which school educated both John Adams, class of 1755, and Samuel Adams, class of 1740, before the Revolution?

Harvard College heard Samuel Adams argue in his master's thesis that resisting the supreme magistrate could be lawful, long before he helped lead a revolt.

George Washington is the only president elected unanimously, in both 1789 and 1792, by which body?

The Electoral College gave Washington every elector's vote both times, while his deputy John Adams kept the vice presidency by a far narrower 77 votes to 50.

George Washington's 1797 retirement set which presidential tradition, later made law by the Twenty-second Amendment?

Serving two terms stayed an unwritten rule until Franklin D. Roosevelt won a third and a fourth, which raised the fears that produced the amendment in 1951.

Which Latin motto emerged in 1776 from a seal-design committee made up of Franklin, Adams and Jefferson?

E pluribus unum, meaning out of many, one, was suggested to the committee by the artist P. E. du Simitiere, and the phrase already ran on the title page of a London magazine.

Which 1787 deal gave every state two senators while basing seats in the House on population?

The Great Compromise is also named for Connecticut, whose delegates proposed it to end a standoff between the large states and the small ones.

Which 1786–87 uprising of Massachusetts farmers helped convince leaders to replace the Articles of Confederation?

Shays' Rebellion exposed a federal government too weak to pay for troops, so Massachusetts militia and a privately funded force had to put it down.

Which Declaration signer, as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, inspired a word for drawing contorted voting districts?

Elbridge Gerry signed a redistricting bill that produced a district shaped like a salamander, and a newspaper fused his name with the animal's.

A key sent to George Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette, kept at Mount Vernon, once opened which Paris prison?

The Bastille key reached Washington in 1790, the year after the fortress fell, and it hangs in the main foyer of his house.

Which fifth president, the last Founding Father to hold the office, gave his name to the capital of Liberia?

James Monroe backed the American Colonization Society, which founded Monrovia in 1822 as a settlement for free people of color from the United States.

Thomas Jefferson took a razor and glue to which text, cutting out the miracles to keep only the moral teachings?

The New Testament passages he kept tell the life of Jesus without the Resurrection, and the Smithsonian acquired his cut-and-paste volume in 1895.

Which common treatment of the era, used heavily on George Washington's sore throat in 1799, likely helped kill him?

Bloodletting took approximately five pints from Washington in his last hours, and modern medical authors think the loss likely sent him into shock.

Benjamin Franklin invented which musical instrument in 1761, played by touching the rims of spinning glass bowls?

The armonica took its name from the Italian word for harmony, and Mozart wrote two pieces for it in 1791.

Which ocean current did Benjamin Franklin chart with his cousin, a Nantucket whaler, after mail ships ran slow?

The Gulf Stream was slowing British mail packets because their captains sailed against it, while American merchant skippers knew to cross it quickly.

In a 1784 satire for a Paris newspaper, Benjamin Franklin urged Parisians to rise earlier and save money on what?

Candles were the saving Franklin had in mind, but he never suggested changing the clocks, so crediting him with daylight saving time is a misconception.

At 16, Benjamin Franklin got his writing into his brother's newspaper by posing as which middle-aged widow?

Silence Dogood had fourteen letters published before James Franklin learned that his younger brother had written them all, which angered him.

Congress cut a passage from Thomas Jefferson's draft Declaration that blamed the king for forcing what on the colonies?

The slave trade passage was removed to appease South Carolina and Georgia, two states that were heavily involved in it.

Which 1798 law, signed by President John Adams, made false or malicious statements against the government a crime?

The Sedition Act was written to expire in March 1801, and Jefferson then pardoned those serving sentences under it while Congress repaid their fines.

Which scandal under John Adams began when French agents demanded bribes from American envoys, sparking the Quasi-War?

The XYZ Affair got its name when the Adams administration released the envoys' reports with the letters X, Y and Z in place of the French agents' names.

Which engineer, a Continental Army veteran, did George Washington appoint in 1791 to plan the new federal capital?

Pierre L'Enfant drew his plan that same year but was dismissed from the project, and Hamilton later helped him find work in Paterson.

Which Ohio city was renamed to honor a society of Continental Army officers whose first leader was George Washington?

Cincinnati was called Losantiville until Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory and an officer in the society, changed the name.

Samuel Adams ran more than £8,000 into arrears in which elected town job he held before the Revolution?

Tax collector was a post in which Adams often failed to collect, which made him popular with those who did not pay but left him liable for the shortfall.

George Washington left mainland North America only once, in 1751, sailing with his ailing half-brother to which island?

Barbados gave Washington a case of smallpox that left his face slightly scarred but made him immune to the disease for the rest of his life.

Thomas Jefferson kept at least four pets of which songbird as president, his favorite being one named Dick?

Mockingbird pets proved easier to live with than the two grizzly bear cubs Jefferson was also given, which he judged too dangerous to keep and passed to a museum.

After John Adams urged grand titles such as Highness for the president, a senator's joke gave him which mocking title?

His Rotundity was Senator Ralph Izard's suggestion for the stout Adams during a long Senate quarrel over official titles, and the joke soon became popular.

Which Virginia delegate proposed the resolution of June 1776 declaring the colonies free and independent states?

Richard Henry Lee offered the motion on June 7, and Congress passed it on July 2, two days before approving the Declaration that explained the decision.

Which Georgia signer of the Declaration, killed in a duel in 1777, left an autograph prized for its rarity?

Button Gwinnett was fairly obscure before signing and died shortly afterward, so his signature is extremely rare; a receipt he signed sold for a record $100,000 in 1979.

Which Virginia signer of the Declaration was the father of one US president and great-grandfather of another?

Benjamin Harrison V was the father of William Henry Harrison, the ninth president, and his great-grandson and namesake became the 23rd.

Which former bookseller hauled captured cannons from Fort Ticonderoga and later served in George Washington's cabinet?

Henry Knox left school at nine to clerk in a bookstore, where he built up an interest in military history, and Fort Knox in Kentucky is named for him.

Which former president of the Continental Congress was captured at sea by the British and held in the Tower of London?

Henry Laurens was charged with treason and spent more than a year in the Tower before being freed on the last day of 1781 in exchange for General Cornwallis.

Which painter's Declaration of Independence canvas hangs in the Capitol Rotunda and has been on the $2 bill since 1976?

John Trumbull painted the drafting committee presenting its work on June 28, 1776, not the signing, which mostly took place weeks later on August 2.

At which 1781 siege did Lord Cornwallis surrender to George Washington's combined American and French army?

Yorktown ended with Cornwallis claiming illness and skipping the ceremony, so his deputy offered the sword to Washington, who waved him on to his own second-in-command.