Samuel Huntington — The First President of the United States

Four confirmed primary documents from the self-educated Connecticut farmer who became the first "President of the United States in Congress Assembled", the highest office in the land before the Constitution created the presidency as we know it.

Samuel Huntington was born on July 3, 1731, in Windham, Connecticut. His father was a farmer, modestly successful. Huntington did not attend college, his brothers did, but he did not. He worked the farm. He educated himself, borrowing books from the family's minister, reading law on his own time. He was admitted to the bar in 1758 and opened a practice in Norwich, Connecticut at twenty-seven. By 1774 he was a judge of the Connecticut Superior Court.

When the colonies' dispute with Britain deepened, Huntington spoke out against the Coercive Acts. Connecticut elected him as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in October 1775. He took his seat in Philadelphia in January 1776 and was present for the independence vote on July 2. He signed the Declaration on August 2, 1776.

In September 1779, when John Jay departed for a diplomatic mission to Spain, Congress chose Huntington to replace him as President of the Continental Congress. When the Articles of Confederation were ratified in March 1781, Huntington's title changed: he became the first person in American history to hold the title "President of the United States in Congress Assembled."

He was not the President in the constitutional sense, that office did not yet exist. But from 1779 to 1781, Samuel Huntington was the highest official of the United States government, presiding over the adoption of the Articles of Confederation and conducting the nation's business under that title. His circular letter to the state governors of February 9, 1780, as President of Congress, is at the LOC House Archives.

As President of Congress, Huntington conducted official correspondence with the state governors and with military commanders. His letter to Governor Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, dated May 11, 1780, forwarding an act of Congress and a letter from P. Legras, is at Lehigh University's digital archive. It shows Huntington conducting the executive business of the United States at a moment when the southern states were under active British military pressure.

Huntington resigned the presidency in July 1781 when poor health forced his return to Connecticut. Three months after he left, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown. He had presided through the most difficult years of the war.

Huntington returned to Connecticut and served as lieutenant governor (1784–1786) and then as governor from 1786 until his death on January 5, 1796, ten consecutive terms. He received honorary degrees from Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale. The Connecticut Historical Society and the Connecticut State Library hold his papers.

He was the self-educated farmer who became the first "President of the United States." He died in Norwich in 1796. A section of Shelton, Connecticut still bears the name Huntington; towns in Pennsylvania and Indiana were named for him. His birthplace in Scotland, Connecticut is maintained by the Governor Samuel Huntington Trust.