PRESBYTERIAN FOUNDERS

of the United States of America

by William J. Skinner

Presbyterians were among the immigrants to the American Colonies during the 1600s and 1700s. They came from England, Ireland, Scotland and other places to help settle the United States. There also were Episcopalians/Anglicans, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Quakers, Dutch Reformed and fewer numbers of Huguenot, Unitarian, Methodist and Calvinists in the population. There were even a few Jews in New York escaped from Brazil expecting problems from the Spanish and others.  In 2019 the Presbyterians have splintered like other denominations and they no longer bear an outsized part in governmental affairs.  Nevertheless, their success in helping to found the USA should be remembered as an example to follow as temptations always challenge the country.

            This summary review concerns only those who were known to be Presbyterian. The religion of many participants in the Founding of the United States was not known and cannot now be determined without more extensive research than has been done. “So strong was the power of religious orthodoxy to compel uniformity in eighteenth-century America that the Founding Fathers obsessively concealed their religious opinions, if tinctured ever so slightly by the unconventional. The result has been a cottage industry among historians trying to puzzle out the religious convictions of the Founders, leading to a stream of publications on such topics as ‘Was Alexander Hamilton a Christian Statesman?’” 1

            The religion of many Founders is unknown, probably because they preferred it that way. Remember the old saying, “Religion and politics should not be discussed at the dinner table.” This played a much larger role in etiquette in the 18the century. But there were also evangelists among the population causing Enlightenment, revivals and conversions during the years leading to the founding of the United States.

            What is known about Presbyterians comes from multiple sources. These sources are attributed in this paper when possible. While most of the Presbyterians who took part in the Revolutionary War and the several first meetings were men, the women played a very large part in taking care of the home and children while the men attended the meetings and fought the subsequent Revolutionary War.  Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence, for example had two wives, the first gave him five children as did the second. Only five children survived.  We know that Martha Washington was with George Washington in Valley Forge before the battles became favorable to the Colonial Army. Abigail Adams was home with the boys while John Adams was in England as Ambassador. Other women were at home doing their part during all of Revolutionary period. Some of the Founders (men and women) did not survive the conflicts and founding of our Nation.

         The Founders were people who were elected to be delegates from individual Colonies, signers of documents at special meetings, and those at home who arose to the occasion and supported the groundswell to establish a new and independent nation. Founders include those who struggled for years against the British. With the Revolutionary War, starting in 1776, through the War of 1812, ending in 1814, there were hundreds of members of the Continental Congress, under the Confederation, and the Congress under the Constitution. This also means there were hundreds and probably thousands in each state for all those years that should be considered Founders.  Some of these people had roles and made efforts that we will never know. But all are saluted and remembered as we can in order to do justice to their participation in a great experiment of founding a Government of, by and for the people for the first time in the history of the world.

          Partly because of what others say about your religion is enough of a reason to keep it private. For example, John Adams wrote to Alexander Johnson, March 24, 1824 to comment on Presbyterians. “I can not concur, however, in your preference in Presbyterianism. The presbytery have too much priestly Authority in matters of faith like that which is claimed by the Episcopal Church. And the doctrine of both the Churches are too Calvinistical for me as well as too hierarchial.” Adams Papers (microfilm) reel 124, Library of Congress. 2

Another example is Thomas Jefferson’s writings about Presbyterian clergy. “The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest, the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical, and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver, if such a word could now be obtained, to put the torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus, because he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and one is three, nor subscribe to that of Calvin that magistrates have a right to exterminate all heretics to Calvinistic creed. They pant to reestablish by law that holy inquisition, which they can only now infuse into public opinion.” Thomas Jefferson to William Short, April 13, 1820.  3

One website (www.adherents.com) study of these men assigns the title “Founding Fathers” to 204 unique individuals. 4   Some had multiple roles. This number is the size of a medium sized Presbyterian church in 2010.  Today there are many smaller churches and a few mega churches.

These 204 people did one or more of the following:

-          Signed the Declaration of Independence

-          Signed the Articles of Confederation

-          Attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787

-          Signed the Constitution of the United States of America

-          Served as Senators in the First Federal Congress (1789-1791)

-          Served as U.S. Representatives in the First Federal Congress

Of the 204 there were 35 Presbyterians (about 1/6th of the total) which was more than any other group except Episcopalians/Anglicans with 88 persons. Many of the Colonies supported the Anglican Churches with taxes, a practice that ended after the founding of the country.  Presbyterians were supported by personal contributions and missionary donations from Europe and no evidence has been found that colony or state taxes ever supported them.

Among the Signers of the Declaration of Independence and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention the religious affiliations of all are identified. However, among signers of the Articles

of Confederation there are 18 protestants with their denomination unknown. Among the first U.S. Congress the religious affiliations of 5 Senators and 20 House members is unknown.

Listed below are the 35 Presbyterians among the 204 Founders defined above.

Signers of the Declaration of Independence indicated with an asterisk * listed in different signing categories

  

     James Wilson of Pennsylvania (also Episcopalian and Deist) *Lawyer -  Died 8/21/1798

Thomas McKean of Delaware* Lawyer - Died 6/24/1817

Mathew Thornton of New Hampshire – Physician – Died 6/24/1803

Abraham Clark of New Jersey – Lawyer/Surveyor – Died 9/15/1794

John Hart of New Jersey – Land Owner – Died 5/11/1779

Richard Stockton of New Jersey – Lawyer – Died 2/28/1781

John Witherspoon of New Jersey – Minister – Died 11/15/1794

William Floyd of New York – Land Speculator – Died 8/4/1821

Phillip Livingston of New York – Merchant – Died 6/12/1778

James Smith of Pennsylvania – Lawyer – Died 7/11/1806

George Taylor of Pennsylvania – Merchant – Died 2/23/1781

Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania – Physician – Died 4/19/1813

Signers of the Articles of Confederation

Thomas McKean of Delaware* -       Lawyer - Died 6/24/1817

John Witherspoon of New Jersey*-  Minister - Died 11/15/1794

John Walton of Georgia -                     Planter – Died 1783

Nathaniel Scudder of New Jersey – Physician – Died 10/17/1781

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention Signing Delegates

Abraham Baldwin of Georgia (also a Congregationalist) – Minister5/Lawyer – died 3/4/1807

William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut (also an Episcopalian) – Lawyer – died 11/14/1789

William Blount of North Carolina (also an Episcopalian) – Politician – Died 3/21/1800

    .James Wilson of Pennsylvania (also an Episcopalian and Deist)* -Lawyer –Died 8/21/1797

Gunning Bedford, Jr. of Delaware – Lawyer – Died 3/30/1812

James McHenry of Maryland – Physician – Died 5/3/1816

William Livingston of New Jersey – Lawyer – Died 7/25/1790

William Paterson of New Jersey – Lawyer – Died 9/9/1806

Hugh Williamson of North Carolina – Educator – Died 5/22/1819

Jared Ingersoll of Pennsylvania – Lawyer – Died 10/31/1822

Alexander Hamilton of New York (also was raised as a Huguenot (Presbyterian) and

was also an Episcopalian) – Lawyer – Died 7/12/1804

Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey (also an Episcopalian) - Lawyer – Died 10/9/1824

John Blair of Virginia (also an Episcopalian) - Lawyer – Died 8/31/1800

Non-Signing Delegates

     James McClurg of Virginia – Physician – Died 7/9/1823  

     William C. Houston of New Jersey – Teacher – Died 8/12/17

William R. Davie of North Carolina – Lawyer – Died 11/29/1820

Alexander Martin of North Carolina – Politician – Died 11/2/1807

First U.S. Congress

Senators

Jonathan Elmer of New Jersey – Physician – Died 9/3/1817

William Paterson of New Jersey* - Lawyer – Died 9/9/1806

House of Representatives

Benjamin Bourne of Rhode Island – Lawyer – Died 9/17/1808

William Smith of Maryland – Merchant – Died 3/27/1814

Hugh Williamson of North Carolina*– Educator – Died 5/22/1819

Elias Boudinot of New Jersey -- Lawyer – Died 10/24/1821 ** See Footnote 4, above.

   

Other Presbyterian Founders

Second President of Continental Congress under Articles of Confederation

            Elias Boudinot of New Jersey a Delegate and a Representative from New Jersey; born in Philadelphia, Pa., May 2, 1740; received a classical education; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1760 and commenced practice in Elizabethtown, N.J.; member of the board of trustees of Princeton College 1772- 1821; member of the committee of safety in 1775; commissary general of prisoners in the Revolutionary Army 1776-1779; Member of the Continental Congress in 1778, 1781, 1782 and 1783, serving as President in 1782 and 1783, and signing the treaty of peace with England; resumed the practice of law; elected as a Pro-Administration candidate to the First, Second, and Third Congresses (March 4, 1789-March 3, 1795); was not a candidate for renomination in 1794 to the Fourth Congress; Director of the Mint from October 1795 to July 1805, when he resigned; elected first president of the American Bible Society, in 1816; died in Burlington, Burlington County, N.J., October 24, 1821; interment in St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal Church Cemetery. 6

            “The Huguenot progenitor [Elias’ grandfather] of the Boudinot family in this country left his ancestral home in Marans, near La Rochelle, famous in the wars of the League, immediately upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and settled with his family in the city of New York, in 1687, where he was one of the founders of the French church, and its first elder. It is a suggestive incident that among the acts of hostility to which he had been subject before his emigration, was a judicial prosecution for employing a private tutor of the Reformed faith in the education of his children.”

            “Elias Boudinot, third in direct descent from this ancestor, was born in 1740, and was baptized by the Rev. George Whitefield. He studied law at Princeton with Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration of Independence, who had married his elder sister. At the age of twenty he commenced the practice of his profession at Elizabethtown, where, two years after, he married the sister of Mr. Stockton. Attached to the Presbyterian Church, he was made president of its board of trustees when only twenty-five years of age. Elizabethtown was at this time the home of William Peartree Smith, William Livingston, and other eminent Jersey men, leaders in the stirring strife of the times, and through them it [the town] had become the center of the patriotic movement throughout New Jersey. Into this movement Boudinot entered with enthusiasm, and began that career of public service which lasted nearly to the close of his life.” From the website: www.americanbiblehistory.com/boudinot-  tablet.html

            This man did some interesting things during his career. “On September 25, 1789, the day after the House of Representatives approved the Bill of Rights in its final form, the pious Elias Boudinot, president of the Congress, 1782-83, announced to his colleagues that he could not ‘think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all of the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessing that He poured down upon them.’ Boudinot, therefore, moved that the House and Senate request the President to ‘recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of God.’”

            “Only two congressmen went on record as opposing Boudinot’s motion, Aedanus Burke of South Carolina (1743-1802) and his colleague Thomas Tucker (1745- 1828), who took the ‘strict separationist’ position that proclaiming a national day of thanksgiving ‘is a business with which Congress have nothing to do; it is a religious matter, and, as such, is proscribed to us.’ Tucker was answered by Roger Sherman (1721-1793), who observed that the ‘practice of thanksgiving [was] warranted by a number of precedents in Holy Writ,’ which he mentioned, and were an ‘example … worthy of Christian imitation on the present occasion.’ Boudinot concluded by citing ‘further precedents from the practice of the late Congress’ which, of course, had approved a whole series of thanksgiving and first day proclamations. Boudinot’s motion pass both houses of Congress with only two recorded objections, and on October 3, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation recommending that the American people, on November 26, thank God for his ‘signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable impositions of his providence’ as well as to beseech Him ‘to pardon our national and other transgressions’.” 7

            Washington, Franklin and others encouraged Thomas Paine to write about the transgressions of the British in his booklet Common Sense which spread the word about reasons to fight for independence during 1776. Paine used Biblical arguments in Common Sense that did not hint of criticism of the Bible or suggest that Paine was a Deist. Paine used the “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” argument, he used Matthew 22:21, and he used Judge 8:22-23 describing the King of Heaven being Israel’s proper sovereign. However, later in life Paine became a thorn in the side of Christianity and his views about it changed. Paine wrote another book, Age of Reason, in 1794, after the drafting and passage of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Jefferson, Adams, Benjamin Rush, John Jay and Benjamin Franklin did not support Paine’s publication of this new book. Paine in late life expressed a request to be buried in a Quaker cemetery, but the Society of Friends denied his request. Paine had fallen out of favor in his last years.

            After a few years of waiting for a real Biblical scholar to write a refutation of Paine’s book, Boudinot who was Director of the U.S. Mint and still on the Board at Princeton University where he had also taught some courses, decided that he must write to refute Paine’s book. Boudinot wanted to explain the “essential facts of the Gospel, which are contradicted, or attempted to be turned into ridicule, by” Paine. “I have endeavored to detect his falsehoods and misrepresentations, and to show his extreme ignorance of the divine scriptures, which he makes the subject of his animadversions – not knowing that ‘they are the power of God unto salvation, to everyone that believeth.’” 8          Boudinot’s book is a theological dissection of Paine’s new book – Age of Reason.

            Boudinot knew and loved the Bible.  Working with several of the Founders, Boudinot donated $10,000 to the American Bible Society (ABS) and served as its first president from 1816 to his death in 1821. John Jay was a vice president of the ABS under Boudinot and became president of ABS in 1821 at Boudinot’s death. Jay was the first chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1789 to 1794 when Jay was selected by Washington to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain. Interestingly, Francis Scott Key, the writer of the United States’ National Anthem, was a Vice President of the organization from 1817 until his  death in 1843. So Boudinot, Jay, and Key were among the supporters of spreading the Gospel with Bibles.

Ministers

            James Caldwell born in Cub Creek, Virginia, in April 1734 and graduated from the College of New Jersey (later became Princeton University) in 1759  9. He inherited 500 acres in Cub Creek, but became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He was active for the patriots and was known as the “soldier parson.” His church and house was burned by Loyalists in 1780. His wife Hannah was at home with a 3 year-old and a toddler when she was shot through a bedroom window on June 7 by British gunfire. James Caldwell was with the military at Morristown at the Battle of Connecticut Farms (now Union, New Jersey) at the time.

            During the climactic Battle of Springfield, in New Jersey, 6000 Crown forces attacked from Staten Island, via Elizabethtown. A force of 2000 Continentals and New Jersey Militia stopped Gen. Knyphausen with a defense bolstered by James Caldwell.  When Caldwell joined the battle, the British were being given a sound beating, but one of the patriot companies ran out of paper wadding. James called for the company to retreat back to the Presbyterian Church where he ran in and grabbed all of the Isaac Watts hymnals. He rushed back outside and began slinging the hymnals to the soldiers saying “fill the British with doctrine from the hymnals” and “Give ‘Em Watts, Boys!” “Put Watts into ‘em, Boys!”

            Caldwell was killed by a sentry when he refused to open a package in Elizabethtown. The sentry, James Morgan, was hanged for murder on January 29, 1782. There were nine orphaned children raised by friends. Source: http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James Caldwell_ (clergyman)

Other Ministers

                There was a religious fervor immediately after the new government was established. The western states held revivals in the forests that were called camp meetings. Presbyterian ministers were some of the biggest promoters of these events. Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, Kentucky, was the site of 25,000 people coming together in August 1801 with eighteen Presbyterian ministers and several Baptist and Methodist ministers using stumps and logs for pulpits.

                Like Rev. George Whitefield, the Anglican who started the earlier revival in the middle of the 18th Century, these men were seeking more conversions than membership in denominations. Presbyterian ministers were puzzled about all of the physical manifestations that these events caused among the people – wringing of hands, becoming pale as death, lying on the ground and lifting up their eyes to Heaven and crying for mercy, the head “jerks,” the “barking” to chase the devil up a tree. Some of this caused enough bad publicity that the Presbyterians and Baptists discontinued the camp meetings, but the Methodists continued and took them all the way to the eastern coast.10

Leaders Before the Revolution

                “Samuel Davies (1723–1761) was President of Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey. Born to Baptist parents in New Castle County, Delaware, Davies received his early education under the tutelage of Rev. Samuel Blair at the academy he conducted in Faggs Manor, Londonderry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. He was ordained a Presbyterian by the New Castle presbytery in 1747.”

                        “At the request of religious dissenters in Hanover, Virginia, the newly ordained 23-year-old Presbyterian minister headed south to be the pastor of four congregations which had been licensed by the Colonial government in 1743. As the first non- Anglican minister licensed to preach in Virginia, Davies advanced the cause of religious and civil liberty in colonial Virginia. Davies’s strong religious convictions led him to value the ‘freeborn mind’ and the inalienable ‘liberty of conscience’ that the established Anglican Church in Virginia often failed to respect in the days before independence. By appealing to British law and notions of British liberty, Davies agitated in an agreeable and effective manner for greater religious tolerance and laid the groundwork for the ultimate separation of church and state in Virginia that was consummated by the Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.”

                “At the same time that Davies was starting his ministry in Virginia, six students began their studies in Elizabeth, N.J., at the College of New Jersey, which had been established in 1746 to educate ‘those of every Religious Denomination.’ In 1754 the trustees of the college persuaded Davies, whose work in Virginia had been favorably noted, to go to Great Britain to raise money for the fledgling school. The journey was at times harrowing, but Davies confided to his diary that ‘To be instrumental of laying a foundation of extensive benefit to mankind, not only in the present but in future generations, is a most animating prospect.’ In the end, Davies and a friend, Gilbert Tennent, spent eleven months in Great Britain and raised substantial support, enough to build Nassau Hall as the first permanent building on the new campus in Princeton.”

            “After his return from Great Britain, Davies’ prominence in Virginia grew during the French and Indian War as he implored men to do their part ‘to secure the inestimable blessings of liberty.’ Governor Dinwiddie declared Davies to be the best recruiter in the colony. Davies’ rhetorical gifts were renowned.  Patrick Henry, who as a child often heard Davies preach, told his biographer before his death that Samuel Davies had taught him what an orator should be.”

            “Musicologists credit Davies with being the first American-born hymn writer, and his poetry was published in Williamsburg in 1752.”

            “Davies also spent his time in Virginia pioneering the literacy of the colony’s slave population, whom he felt were equally deserving of direct access to the word of God.”

              “In 1759, four years after he had returned from his trip to Great Britain on behalf of the College of New Jersey, the trustees of the college called on Davies w again – this time to become the school’s fourth president. Davies succeeded Jonathan Edwards, who died just six weeks after his inauguration. Unfortunately, Davies’s term as president was also cut short when he died in 1761 at the age of 37. He was buried alongside his predecessor in Princeton Cemetery.”

            “Despite his relatively short life, Davies accomplished much and lived the creed to which he exhorted the Princeton Class of 1760 in his baccalaureate address and which has been echoed by the presidents of Princeton throughout its history: ‘Whatever be your place, imbibe and cherish a public spirit. Serve your generation.’”  11

After the Revolution and Beginning of the Republic

            During the period of 1810-1830, revivals and evangelism activities abounded the entire country and this coincided with the time that the states began to drop tax support for religion. Massachusetts held out until 1833 and finally voted to discontinue support for churches. This signaled the disappearance of the “nursing father” concept from Isaiah of government aiding the churches.

Some information was extracted from: www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html; http://www.adherents.com/gov/congress_001.html;  www.usconstitution.net/declarsigndata.html www.usconstitution.net/artsigndata.html;  www.usconstitution.net/constframedata.html; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/If you have information about any of the individuals

 If you see any information in this paper that differs from your understanding, please share it with the author to allow him to make corrections.

Prepared Originally in August 2010 and Revised February 17, 2019 by William J. Skinner, Lake Worth, Florida Tele: 561-433-1170

Email: BillSkinnerLW@aol.com

Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved. Permission to reprint is Freely given to all Church Ministers and Elders for use in their Christian Education and church activities.

END NOTES

1.    Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, James A. Hutson, 1998, Library of Con- gress citing Douglas Adair, “Was Alexander Hamilton a Christian Statesman?”, Trevor Colbourn, Ed. Fame and the Founding Fathers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 141-159

2.       “The Founders on Religion:  a book of quotations” by James H. Hutson, Princeton University Press, 2005

3.       Ibid. Adams Extracts. 393

4.        In reviewing the members of the First House of Representatives Elias Boudinot is listed as Episcopalian, not Presbyterian. But he was elected to office in the Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, New Jersey at the age of 25 and his family acknowledged that he was Presbyterian when they wrote to Princeton University during the time Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton to describe a bronze plaque they wanted to erect to his memory of his long service as a member of the Board of Trustees of Princeton (established as the College of New Jersey by Presbyterians. Boudinot was buried in an Episcopal church cemetery in Philadelphia.  Perhaps in his last years he attended that Episcopal Church.  In the 1820s there was the emergence of a Western Revival brought to eastern cities by the Methodists. These were held in New York in 1808, and in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Providence in the next decade. See Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 105.  Presbyterians had a New Side – Old Side split and reunion into the more evangelical New Side church in the 1700s. The New Side won this battle because of the log colleges where they trained their pastors. The Presbyterian Church was having difficult financial times in Philadelphia in the early 1800s. “In 1812 Elias Boudinot gave the [Second Presbyterian] Church four brick homes at the northeast corner of Ninth and Cherry Streets, to provide homes for widows and their children.  It was known as the Widows Asylum.”  See Presbyterian Historical Society documents on 2^nd Presbyterian Church, Records, 1759-1940 (bulk: 1786-1899) Finding Aid to Record Group 33, 8.5 cubic feet.  Found at: http://www.history.pcusa.org/collections/findingaids/ fa.cfm?record_id=33

5.       Baldwin was educated at Yale College in theology.  He tutored at Yale and in 1779 became a chaplain in the Revolutionary War. Later founded the University of Georgia. His biography does not say he was a lawyer. See www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article. jsp?id=h-2710

 6.      Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/

 7.      Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, Id. at 79-80

 8.      The Age of Revelation: The AGE OF REASON Shewen to be an Age of Infidelity, Elias Boudinot, 1801,

           Philadelphia, and reprinted by American Vision Press, Powder Springs, Georgia, 2010, Forward by  

           Gary DeMar, xi, xxi

9.       James Madison was attracted to attend the College of New Jersey, partly because of the fame of      John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian Minister.  Madison graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1771, so he would not have met James Caldwell at the College.  Madison finished his junior and senior years in one year, but he stayed on longer to read some law and for tutoring in Hebrew by John Witherspoon. Source: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Compan- ion/madison_james/html

10.              Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, p. 101

11.              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Davies_(Presbyterian_educator) Acessed August 3, 2010