Compiled by Russell Bastedo
State Curator
1998

John Langdon (President, 1785-1786; Governor, 1788-1789, 1805-1809, 1810-1812). Langdon (1741-1819) was born and died at Portsmouth (NH). After education at grammar school, Langdon was apprenticed in the countinghouse of Daniel Rindge, an important provincial official and merchant. At the age of twenty-two (1767) he had learned enough to captain a merchant vessel.

Langdon favored freedom from the Crown for New Hampshire throughout the 1760s, and he took a seat as a delegate to the Continental Congress, meeting at Philadelphia (PA), on May 10, 1775. Reappointed a delegate for the 1776 session, Langdon instead returned to New Hampshire, where he served as a Representative and Speaker of the House (1776, 1777).

At the 1777 session of the Legislature, a letter arrived from General Horatio Gates asking the Legislature for more troops for the Northern Army. Langdon proposed that the House of Representatives adjourn, and that the legislators gather as many volunteers as they could and march westward to join Gates's army. The Speaker's proposal was adopted, and Langdon himself marched to Bennington (VT), where he was present at the surrender of British General Burgoyne and his army. After this event, which was a critical turning point in the course of the War for Independence, Langdon marched with others to Rhode Island, to challenge the British occupying force there.

Throughout the war years Langdon filled a number of important positions. He played a major role in persuading New Hampshire to ratify the new Constitution of the United States, and in 1785 he won election as the first chief executive (President) of the new State of New Hampshire. In 1786 his title changed to Governor.

Location: State House, Second Floor, Executive Council Chambers
Portrait by U.D. Tenney, 1873, after original by J. Trunbull, 1792, in Yale University, Art Gallery collections