biography
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1715–83)
|
| biography:
| Colonial and Revolutionary official, born in Charles Co, Maryland, USA. He served in the Maryland Assembly almost continuously during 1757–79. He signed the Association of the Freemen of Maryland (1775), which approved armed resistance against the British. Elected to the Continental Congress (1779), he signed the Articles of Confederation (1781) and then served as president of the Congress of the Confederacy (some historians have therefore called him ‘the first president of the United States’). He worked to free the public lands to the west from the control of individual states, especially Virginia. |
|
|
