Death of Peyton Randolph, First President of the Continental Congress
Peyton Randolph of Virginia is not a familiar name to most people, but he played a significant role at the beginning of the Revolutionary War and in the years leading up to it. He was a delegate to the First Continental Congress in September-October 1774, and was elected as the first president of the congress. In April 1775, he helped work things out between the colonists and the governor of Virginia during the Williamsburg “gunpowder incident“. He was back in Philadelphia in May 1775 as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, and was again elected president, but he had to leave in late May because the governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, had called for the Virginia legislature to meet, and Randolph was the speaker of the House of Burgesses. (John Hancock of Massachusetts was elected president of the congress in his place.) Later that summer, he served as president of the Virginia Convention, which was basically the revolutionaries’ replacement of the old Virginia legislature. And he was appointed as a delegate to the Continental Congress again in August.
But it seems that Randolph didn’t have very good health. On October 22, 1774, he was ill and unable to attend, so Henry Middleton of South Carolina was elected as president of the First Continental Congress in his place (the congress ended just a few days later). And exactly one year later, at age 54, he died suddenly in Philadelphia. Richard Henry Lee, also a delegate from Virginia, wrote to George Washington on October 23, 1775:
‘Tis with infinite concern I inform you that our good old Speaker Peyton Randolph Esqr. went yesterday to dine with Mr Harry Hill, was taken during the course of dinner with the dead palsey, and at 9 oClock at night died without a groan—Thus has American liberty lost a powerful Advocate, and human nature a sincere friend.
The Continental Congress decided to go into mourning for a month. (In this case, going into mourning meant wearing a piece of black fabric around their left arm.) The funeral was on October 24, and it seemed like the whole city turned out, including the members of Congress, who didn’t conduct any business that day. The funeral sermon was preached by the Reverent Jacob Duché, who was also a sort of chaplain to the Congress.
(By the way, don’t ask me what “dead palsey” was.)
Sources
Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 3, pp. 302-4.
“To George Washington from Richard Henry Lee, 22–23 October 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, accessed September 29, 2019, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0192. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 2, 16 September 1775 – 31 December 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987, pp. 217–218.]