250 and Counting

Tag: 1776 births

Joseph Lee Smith–May 28, 1776

There’s a cool thing about Joseph Lee Smith that Mike doesn’t cover in his story today, probably because he is SO JEALOUS OF ME.

Nah, I’m kidding. But the fact is, Joseph Lee Smith is tied up a little bit in my distant family history.

I mentioned once before that my family can trace back to a common ancestor, Thomas Call, who arrived in America sometime in the 1640s. Thus, anyone with the surname Call is related, however distantly. There were Calls who were among the first Mormons to go west with (the other) Joseph Smith, so the name is about as common in Utah as it is uncommon pretty much everywhere else.

Smith moved to Florida in 1821 and from 1823 to 1832 he was a territorial judge. In 1823 a delegate from Florida named Richard K Call introduced a resolution calling for the US House Judiciary Committee to investigage Smith on charges that he took bribes and kickbacks. The resolution was adopted and the investigation went on for at least seven years, but no charges were ever filed to impeach Smith.

There are a few Calls in Florida history, and a couple of towns have a Call Street, including Starke, which has a “Call Street Historic District“. This area was named specifically for Richard K Call.

Hm. My brother is named Richard Call, though he has a different middle initial. I may have to let him know about this…

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May 28, 2026
Justice John Johnson–May 27, 1776

Justice John Johnson had a brief career in the Indiana Supreme Court, but this shouldn’t be the legacy he leaves behind, especially inasmuch as there were no important decisions handed down during the six-ish months in which he was part of that bench.

It would be his earlier efforts as an Indiana politician that you want to know about. And yes, Johnson was an active politician early in the days of the Indiana Congress. Before there was a state Constitution, there were the Territorial laws that Johnson helped to organize, so he was probably quite well-versed in what was already down on paper.

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May 27, 2026
Simon Fraser–May 20, 1776

Simon Fraser was born in Hoosick, New York, which is close to where New York’s border meets with those of Vermont and Massachusetts. He was the youngest of eight children.

He moved to Montreal when he was 14 and worked with his uncles in the fur trade, apprenticing to the North West Company the following year. Now, the North West Company had already commissioned someone to find a river route to the Pacific Ocean. That may did find a route that worked for fur sources but wasn’t especially good as a trade route. Fraser was given the responsibility for extending operations to the west, and he did it by establishing trading posts along the way, essentially taking possession of that part of the continent. This led to further exploration and either establishing or expanding fur trade along the way.

In 1814 he got caught up in a dispute in the Red River Valley area, between the North West Company and Thomas Douglas, a controlling shareholder of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which had established the Red River Colony. By 1816 this dispute ballooned into the Battle of Seven Oaks, in which twenty people were killed. Fraser wasn’t involved in the battle but he was arrested anyway by Douglas. He was eventually acquitted of any charges, but that was pretty much the end of his involvement in the fur trade industry, though he remained an active menber of the North West Company until his death in 1862. Because his wife died the next day, the pair were buried in a single grave in a cemetery near their home in Cornwall, Ontario.

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May 20, 2026
Hoosier Daddy–May 18, 1776

About that title: I regret nothing.

Dennis Pennington gets a lot of well-deserved attention for his political work in Indiana, but the fact is that what he did affected the entire Northwest Territory, which also includes most of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota east of the Mississippi River. He was also instrumental in the anti-slavery movement in that area, first supporting like-minded individuals for public offices, and then getting anti-slavery laws introduced and passed as a territorial legislator. When Indiana put together its first constitutional convention, Pennington was among the delegates.

Pennington is remembered for his honesty and common sense, as well as his kindness. Beginning in 1810 he served speaker of its lower house of representatives and helped secure the town of Corydon’s selection as the new seat of government in 1813. Pennington also served in the Indiana General Assembly for eighteen years.

Pennington’s most visible legacy is located in Corydon, Indiana, where he supervised construction of Indiana’s first state capitol building. The Old Capitol, located in the Corydon Historic District is part of the Corydon Capital State Historic Site, administered by the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites.

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May 18, 2026
Amos Eaton–May 17, 1776

Amos Eaton, a co-founder of the Renssalaer School (later Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute) in Troy, NY, managed to flip scientific thinking on its head. He believed in having students learn through experimental demonstrations: let them apply the science in the field and then break it down later in the lab.

This flew directly in the face of the traditional liberal arts tradition, which involved the classics, theology, lecture and recitation. However, it also led to more students in more courses of study to take up some version of a practicum than there previously was.

In addition to teaching at the school, Eaton also engaged in natural philosophy lectures throughout the Northeastern United States, and was a champion of higher education for women, suggesting that women had a lack of opportunity to learn higher-end math, rather than a skills deficit or general disinclination. (i.e., quit blaming the women.)

Nowadays there’s an Amos Eaton Hall on the school’s campus, which houses the Math Department, and a faculty endowment bears his name.

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May 17, 2026
Valentine Efner–May 5, 1776

Given the fact that Valentine Efner (sometimes spelled “Effner”) skipped so many roll call votes in Congress, it’s a wonder he ran for Representative in the first place.

We have to think that Efner was an informal kind of representative, and being in the rarefied air of Congress had him missing the farm life, to which he returned immediately after his term of office had ended.

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PS Pardon the brief notes, we had a veterinary emergency here that ate up most of my night. Fortunately our dog is well.

May 5, 2026
Elias Boudinot Caldwell–April 3, 1776

I mentioned briefly that Elias Boudinot Caldwell was a member of the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America (to the extent that anyone can say that briefly), and I though I’d get a little deeper into that organization here.

The group was founded in 1816 by Robert Finley, along with Caldwell and Francis Scott Key, to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to sub-Saharan Africa. Their feeling was that free people of color could not integrate into American society. It was also thought that free Blacks running around would incite still-enslaved Blacks to escape or rebel. So…why not relocate them?

The group, which later became known as the American Colonization Society, thought they’d be preventing a civil war from breaking out. In fact, some historians think they may have hastened its onset. What’s more, only a few thousand African Americans out of millions, eventually made the trip to (what would become) Liberia. Worse still, they were kind of bad at it. Transporting people to Liberia was very costly, and close to half the people who arrived died from tropical diseases.

And for all that, the ACS didn’t officially dissolve until 1964.

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April 3, 2026
John Frederick Frelinghuysen–March 21, 1776

John Frelinghuysen was born on this day in 1776 (hey! Cake and Candles for this man!) and died in 1833. Like many people of the time, he never permanently left the area where he was born. Born there, lived and worked there, died there.

He probably went to Trenton on business a few times, and he was stationed at Sandy Hook while in the Army, but that appears to be about all as far as travel.

John Frelinghuysen married Louisa Mercer in 1797, and they had two daughters: Gertrude and Mary Ann. Louisa died around 1809 and John married Elizabeth Mercereau Van Vechten on November 13, 1811. They had eight children: Louisa, Theodore, Frederick J., Catharine, Sallie, Sophia, and Elizabeth LaGrange Frelinghuysen.

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March 21, 2026
Innis Green–February 26, 1776

Innis Green served as a Jacksonian Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 20th (1827–1829) and 21st (1829–1831) Congresses, essentially holding the party’s populist line.

But he did deviate from party alignment on May 26, 1830, when Green voted nay on H.R. 287, the Indian Removal Act. Despite this, the bill passed narrowly, 102-97. This stance positioned him among Pennsylvania Jacksonians influenced by local Quaker and moral opposition to forced tribal relocations, contrasting with southern and western Democrats who prioritized land acquisition for white settlement.

Green’s vote highlighted intraparty tensions over executive-driven policies, though it did not derail his Jacksonian credentials amid broader support for Jackson’s anti-bank rhetoric and vetoes of federal internal improvements like the Maysville Road in 1830.

The short version of all that is, while Green was a fairly reliable guy when it came to upholding Jacksonian politics, he often acted with his actual constituents in mind: if it wasn’t going to poorly affect the people in his district, he could get behind it. Otherwise, he would be willing to vote against it.

Perhaps he didn’t make a huge splash politically, but there are some behavior lessons in there.

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February 26, 2026
William Scarbrough–February 18, 1776

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William Scarbrough, who was the owner of the USS Savannah more than he was anything else, purchased the ship when it was still on the slipway. It was purchased with the aim of converting it to an auxiliary steamship and give his company the distinction of offering the world’s first transatlantic steamship service.

The Savannah had multiple sources of propulsion, though. The steam engine could drive the side paddlewheels on either side which were retractable when the engine wasn’t in use. But it also had rigging that allowed it to be used as a sailing ships. So when it made the crossing in 1819, the trip took the better part of a month because poor weather forced them to use the sails more than the steam engine, a ratio of about 89% to 11%.

The ship wound up being more of a novelty than anything else, and unfortunately she ran aground off the south shore of Long Island and broke up. When Tropical Storm Ian passed through in 2022, some wreckage washed up on Fire Island that was thought to be part of the Savannah. You can visit those parts at the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society‘s museum exhibit.

February 18, 2026