Members of the First Continental Congress

You know sev­eral mem­bers of the First Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress from school — John Adams, John Jay, Patrick Henry, and George Wash­ing­ton. If you drink beer, you know another mem­ber — Samuel Adams. But there were more, 50 more.

The idea of a meet­ing such as this was floated a year ear­lier by Renais­sance man Ben­jamin Franklin, but it took the clos­ing of Boston Har­bor by the British and the fol­low­ing Boston Tea Party¹ to get the ball really rolling. The First Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress met in Philadelphia’s Car­pen­ters Hall on Sep­tem­ber 5, 1774. Of the 12 colonies, only 12 sent del­e­gates, as Geor­gia was beset by prob­lems with Indi­ans and needed help from the British mil­i­tary to put down the problems.

So…you know those few men that you had to know for school, but what about the other ones? Here they are from the First Con­ti­nen­tal Congress -

From the Province of New Hamp­shire
Nathaniel Folsom

From the Province of Mass­a­chu­setts Bay
John Adams
Samuel Adams
Thomas Cush­ing
Robert Treat Paine

From the Colony of Rhode Island and Prov­i­dence Plan­ta­tions
Stephen Hop­kins
Samuel Ward

From the Con­necti­cut Colony
Silas Deane
Eliphalet Dyer
Roger Sherman

From the Province of New York
John Alsop
James Duane
John Jay
Philip Liv­ingston
Isaac Low
County of Kings
Simon Boerum
County of Orange
John Har­ing
Henry Wis­ner
County of Suf­folk
William Floyd

From the Province of New Jer­sey
Stephen Crane
John De Hart
James Kin­sey
William Liv­ingston
Richard Smith

From the Province of Penn­syl­va­nia
Edward Bid­dle
John Dick­in­son
Joseph Gal­loway
Charles Humphreys
Thomas Mif­flin
John Mor­ton
Samuel Rhoads
George Ross

From New Cas­tle, Kent, and Sus­sex, on Delaware
Thomas McK­ean
George Read
Cae­sar Rodney

From Mary­land
Samuel Chase
Robert Golds­bor­ough
Thomas John­son
William Paca
Matthew Tilghman

From the Colony and Domin­ion of Vir­ginia
Richard Bland
Ben­jamin Har­ri­son V
Patrick Henry
Richard Henry Lee
Edmund Pendle­ton
Pey­ton Ran­dolph
George Washington

From the Province of North Car­olina
Richard Caswell
Joseph Hewes
William Hooper

From the Province of South Car­olina
Christo­pher Gads­den
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Henry Mid­dle­ton
Edward Rut­ledge
John Rutledge

Pos­si­bly next — the mem­bers of the Sec­ond Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress.²

1. To protest the The Stamp Act of 1765 and the Town­shend Acts of 1767, a secret group call­ing them­selves the Sons of Lib­erty, orga­nized by future Con­gress mem­ber Samuel Adams, qui­etly boarded 3 ships (The Dart­mouth, the Elenor and the Beaver) on Decem­ber 16, 1773 and threw most of the con­tents of each ship into the har­bor. It totaled around £10,000 worth of mer­chan­dise. [↩]
2. The list of these men can pretty much be found any­where, but for lit­tle tid­bits about this piece I got a few facts from U-S-History.com. [↩]