Samuel Huntington rose from humble beginnings to become one of the leaders of the American Revolution and a prominent politician in Connecticut. He originally was trained as a cooper, but through self-education and some legal training he had become a lawyer by 1758. During the 1760s he entered politics, being elected to Connecticut's lower house in 1764 and then to the colony's council in 1775. By that time the Revolutionary movement, which Huntington supported as a moderate Whig, was gaining momentum. He became a member of the Second Continental Congress in 1775 and signed the Declaration of Independence the next year. Although he often struggled with illness, Huntington sat in Congress until 1784 and served as its president from 1779 to 1781.

After leaving Congress, Huntington remained politically active in Connecticut, becoming the state's chief justice of the supreme court, the lieutenant governor in 1785, and then governor from 1786 until his death on January 5, 1796. He was also a supporter of the U.S. Constitution.

Huntington's life was marked by some controversy. He was accused of profiting personally from his work in the Continental Congress and was involved in pushing Connecticut's claims in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania (see Wyoming Valley Wars) and in the Western Reserve in what became Ohio.

Bibliography:

Larry R. Gerlach, Connecticut Congressman: Samuel Huntington, 1731-1796 (Hartford: American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut, 1976).

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