Elias Boudinot | |
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10th President of the Continental Congress | |
In office November 4, 1782 – November 2, 1783 |
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Preceded by | John Hanson |
Succeeded by | Thomas Mifflin |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New Jersey's At-large district |
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In office March 4, 1789 – March 4, 1795 |
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Preceded by | none |
Succeeded by | Thomas Henderson |
Personal details | |
Born | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
May 2, 1740
Died | October 24, 1821 Burlington, New Jersey |
(aged 81)
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Elias Boudinot (ee-LIE-as boo-DIN-ot;[needs IPA] May 2, 1740 – October 24, 1821) was a lawyer and statesman from Elizabeth, New Jersey who was a delegate to the Continental Congress and a U.S. Congressman for New Jersey. He also served as the second president under the Articles of Confederation, the President of the Continental Congress from 1782 to 1783 and Director of the United States Mint from 1795 until 1805.
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Early life and education
Elias Boudinot was born in Philadelphia on May 2, 1740. His father, Elias Boudinot III, was a silversmith; he was a neighbor and friend of Benjamin Franklin. His mother, Mary Catherine Williams, was from the British West Indies; her father was from Wales. Elias' paternal grandfather, Elie (sometimes called Elias) Boudinot, was the son of Jean Boudinot and Marie Suire of Marans, Aunis, France. They were a Huguenot (French Protestant) family who fled to New York about 1687 to avoid the religious persecutions of King Louis XIV. Mary Catherine Williams and Elias Boudinot, Sr. were married on Aug 8, 1729. Over the next twenty years, they had nine children. The first, John, was born in the British West Indies-Antigua. Of the others, only the younger Elias and his siblings Annis, Mary, and Elisha reached adulthood. Elisha Boudinot became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
After studying and being tutored at home, Elias Boudinot went to Princeton, New Jersey to read the law with another attorney. His mentor was Richard Stockton, who later signed the Declaration of Independence, and was married to Elias's sister Annis Boudinot.
Career
In 1760, Boudinot was admitted to the bar, and began his practice in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He owned land adjacent to the road from Elizabethtown to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey.
Marriage and family
After getting established, on April 21, 1762, Boudinot married Richard's sister, Hannah Stockton (1736–1808). Elias and Hannah had two children, Maria Boudinot, who died at age two, and Susan Vergereau Boudinot.
Susan married William Bradford, who became Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under George Washington. After Bradford's death in 1795, Susan returned and made her home with her parents. She edited her father's papers, which are a light into the events of the Revolutionary era.
In 1805, Elias moved his family to a new home in Burlington, New Jersey and lived there the rest of his life. Hannah died a few years after their move.
Later career
In his later years, Boudinot invested and speculated in land. He owned large tracts in Ohio including most of Green Township in what is now the western suburbs of Cincinnati. On his death, he willed 13,000 acres (53 km2) to the city of Philadelphia for parks and city needs.
Political career
Boudinot became a prominent lawyer and his practice prospered, As the revolution drew near, he aligned with the Whigs, and was elected to the New Jersey provincial assembly in 1775. In the early stages of the Revolutionary War, he was active in promoting enlistment and several times loaned money to field commanders for supplies. Elias also became one of the focal points for rebel spies, who were sent to Staten Island and Long Island to observe and report on movements of specific British garrisons and regiments.
On May 5, 1777, General George Washington asked for him to be made commissary general for prisoners. Congress through the board of war concurred. Boudinot was made a colonel in the Continental Army for this task. He held this job until other responsibilities forced him to resign in July 1778. The commissary was responsible not just for enemy prisoners, but for supplying American prisoners held by the British.
In November 1777, the New Jersey legislature named Boudinot as one of their delegates to the Second Continental Congress. His duties as Commissary prevented his attendance, so in May 1778 he submitted his resignation, and by early July he was replaced and able to attend his first meeting on July 7, 1778. He maintained his concerns for the welfare of prisoners of war throughout his term as a delegate. His first term ended that year.
In 1781, Boudinot returned to the Congress, and this term lasted through 1783. In 1783, he signed the Treaty of Paris. In November 1782 he was elected the President of the Continental Congress for a one year term. The President of Congress was a mostly ceremonial position with no real authority, but the office did require him to handle a good deal of correspondence and sign official documents.[1]
When the United States government was formed in 1789, New Jersey sent Boudinot to the House of Representatives. He was elected to the second and third congresses as well, where he generally supported the administration, but refused to join the growing forces that led to formal political parties. In 1794, he declined to serve another term, and left Congress in early 1795. In October 1795, President Washington appointed him the Director of the United States Mint, a position he held until his retirement in 1805. After many turbulent decades in law and politics, he was to recall the metallurgic skill learned in his father's silversmithy. He was scrupulous in his accounting, as reported to Congress, and left the US Mint in excellent order for the future.
Later public service
In addition to serving in political office, Elias supported many civic, religious, and educational causes during his life. In Revolutionary times, Princeton was the College of New Jersey, and Boudinot served as one of its trustees for nearly half a century, from 1772 until 1821. When the Continental Congress was forced to leave Philadelphia in 1783 while he was its president, he moved the meetings to Princeton, where they met in the University's Nassau Hall.
On Thursday, September 24, 1789, the first House of Representatives voted to recommend the First Amendment of the newly drafted Constitution to the states for ratification. The next day, Congressman Elias Boudinot from New Jersey proposed that the House and Senate jointly request of President Washington to proclaim a day of thanksgiving for “the many signal favors of Almighty God.” Boudinot said that he “could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them.” Quote from-The Annals of the Congress, The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, Compiled From Authentic Materials by Joseph Gales, Senior (Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton, 1834), 1:949–950.
A devout Presbyterian, Boudinot supported missions and missionary work. He wrote The Age of Revelation in response to Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. To that end, he was one of the founders of the American Bible Society, and served as its President after 1816. He argued for the rights of black and American Indian citizens, and sponsored students to the Board School for Indians in Connecticut. One of these, a young Cherokee named Gallegina Watie, stayed with him while traveling to the school. The two so impressed each other that Gallegina asked for and was given permission to use his name. He later was known as Elias Boudinot.
Legacy and honors
- Princeton University Library has a collection of his papers and many family possessions and portraits.
- Elias Boudinot Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey is named after him.
- Boudinot Street in Philadelphia, located between C and D Streets.
- Boudinot Avenue in Western Hills, Cincinnati, Ohio
- Boudinot Place in Elizabeth, New Jersey
- Boudinot Street in Princeton, New Jersey.
- Boudinot Lane in Franklin Township, New Jersey
Quotes
- “Be religiously careful in our choice of all public officers...and judge of the tree by its fruits.”
- "Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow."
References
Further reading
- Boudinot, J. J. (1896). The Life, Public Services, Addresses and Letters of Elias Boudinot. New York.
- Boyd, George (1969). Elias Boudinot: Patriot and Statesman, 1740-1821. Westwood, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing. ISBN 0-8371-1345-8.
- Boyle, Joseph Lee (2002). Their Distress is Almost Intolerable: The Elias Boudinot Letterbook, 1777-1778. Heritage Books. ISBN 0-7884-2210-3.
External links
- Elias Boudinot at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-05-18
- Elias Boudinot at The Political Graveyard
Political offices | ||
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Preceded by John Hanson |
President of the Continental Congress November 4, 1782– November 2, 1783 |
Succeeded by Thomas Mifflin |
Government offices | ||
Preceded by Henry William de Saussure |
3rd Director of the United States Mint 1795–1805 |
Succeeded by Robert Patterson |
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