John LANGDON, I

  General Notes:

December 14, 1774, he led the raid on Fort William and Mary. Sea captain by the time he was 22, sailing over the Atlantic trade routes. December 16, 1773, Boston Tea Party. Portsmouth held a town meeting and passed a tea resolve designed to prevent the landing of any tea. The citizens of Portsmouth appointed Langdon to a committee designed to assure compliance with the resolve and to a Committee of Correspondence which was to maintain communications with the other colonies. October 19, 1774, King George III issued a royal order banning the export of powder and arms to America. John Langdon led 400 men against Fort William and Mary in New Castle. The Americans quickly subdued the six man guard force, hauled down the Union Jack, broke open the powder magazine, and departed with 100 barrels of powder. 1775 elected as one of New Hampshire's representatives to the Second Continental Congress. March of 1776, the Continental Congress legalized privateering. John Langdon resigned from Congress to accept the lucrative position of agent of prizes for the colony of New Hampshire. He took charge of the sale of all prizes brought into Portsmouth and amassed a fortune on the side by outfitting several privateers of his own. Langdon was elected speaker of the New Hampshire House in December, 1776 and he held that position until 1782. Langdon's greatest contribution in the legislature was to pressure the state toward fiscal responsibility. He was an early advocate of taxation, price controls and the use of silver and gold instead of paper currency. As a colonel, he did lead a voluntary company to Saratoga, where he witnessed the surrender of Burgoyne, and in the summer of 1778, he was in command of 46 men as part of John Sullivan's army in Rhode Island. It is doubtful that he saw any action at either time. Elected to the Continental Congress in 1783 and '84 he declined to serve, choosing instead to remain in New Hampshire. In 1784 he was a state senator from Rockingham County and in 1785 was elected president of New Hampshire. By 1786 the infant United States was in trouble because the federal government was not strong enough to regulate the country. John Langdon favored a strong federal government, and when a constitutional convention was called to restructure the government, he was elected as a delegate. He worked on the Constitution in Philadelphia and then went to New York as a delegate to the Continental Congress and helped win approval for the new document. He returned to New Hampshire late in 1787 and turned all his ability and influence to the task of getting the ratification convention to approve the Constitution. This it did on June 21, 1788, as New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify, making the Constitution law. Langdon signed the Constitution. In November of 1788 the New Hampshire Legislature elected John Langdon as a senator and early in 1789 he traveled to the capital in New York City to attend the first meeting of the United States Senate. The Senate elected him its president and in this role he counted the votes of the electoral college in the first national election. To Langdon fell the honor of informing George Washington that he had been elected president, and on April 30, 1789, he administered the oath of office to the nation's first chief executive. John Langdon served New Hampshire as senator until March of 1801 and was influential in forming the 3 policies of the United States in its early years. Then he returned to New Hampshire and served as state senator, as speaker of the house, and as governor for six terms. In 1812 he turned down the Republican nomination for vice president of the United States and retired from public life. In 1813 his wife died and part of his great spirit died with her. Langdon devoted his remaining years to religious matters and on September 18, 1819, he died in his mansion on Pleasant Street in Portsmouth, ending an era in the state's history.

John married UNKNOWN. (UNKNOWN was born on an unknown date and died in 1813.)