William Ellery

Portrait by Artist to Come

QUICK FACTS
BORN:
22 December 1727 in Newport, Rhode Island
  DIED:
15 February 1820 in Newport
Buried at Common Burying Ground and Island Cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island.

William Ellery, American politician and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1727. He graduated from Harvard in 1747, engaged in trade, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1770. He was a member of the Rhode Island Committee of Safety in 1775 – 76, and was a delegate in Congress in 1776 – 81 and again in 1783 – 85.

Just after his first election to Congress, he was placed on the important Marine Committee, and he was made a member of the Board of Admiralty when it was established in 1779. In April 1786 he was elected Commissioner of the Continental Loan Office for the State of Rhode Island, and from 1790 until his death in 1820 at Newport, he was collector of the customs for the district of Newport.

ADAPTED FROM:
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 ed.

 

The First Congress faced a unique challenge, and those congressmen and senators who gathered in New York in the spring of 1789 were awed by what lay ahead of them. Not only would members of the Congress have to pass some promised amendments to the new Constitution, but they would have to fill out the bare framework of a government that the Philadelphia Convention had created, including the organization of the executive and judicial departments. Some therefore saw the First Congress as something in the nature of a second constitutional convention.

Gordon S. Wood
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)