What year/date was the “first” American citizen born? I imagine it is possible that there were some citizens at the time of independence who were born at the end of the 17th century but what is the earliest confirmed birth-date and who was the person?
What is the exact time and date that you consider the America to come into existance?
July 4 1776?
Or at the ratification of the Constitution?
Do you mean who was the oldest person in the country on July 4, 1776 who had been born in the 13 colonies?
Not necessarily born in the 13 colonies, but pretty much yes. I should perhaps have been clearer in the OP.
This is a really interesting question. When was American citizenship created? I don’t see how it could have been before the ratification of the Constitution, but I wouldn’t know. How did they decide who got citizenship: did Loyalists get made citizens against their will? What happened to their English citizenship? At what point did Britain stop recognizing Americans as citizens of their country: 1783? 1815? Earlier? Later?
What about someone who got off of the boat on July 5, 1776, but was older than the person who was in country the day before?
I don’t know of someone, I’m just trying to get the parameters of what you are asking.
Citizenship was defined by the Constitution as of 1868 with the 14th amendment. Prior to that, it was defined by the states. (You were a Citizen of Pennsylvania or Delaware, etc - which made you a citizen of the United States (albeit the name of the country was not carved in stone at the time)
Anyone meeting the definition of citizen in the state they resided, became a citizen at the time of that state’s constitution becoming ratified. But, in many states the definition was never clear until the Federal Constitution Amendment 14.
Not a citizen, but the first baby born in America to British parents is Virginia Dare.
That person would be who I’m looking for. They could have lived in Ireland or Scotland or England or wherever for the entirety of their life up to the point they became a US citizen (or whatever the proto-equivalent was post-1776) but have been born before any of the then living “native” Americans.
Of the major figures, I’d go with Benjamin Franklin (b. January 17, 1706). I can’t confirm whether he was the oldest signatory of the Declaration or the Constitution. Let’s use him as a baseline and find people who qualify for the OP who were older.
No, there clearly was a concept of American citizenship that pre-dated the ratification of the Constitution, because the Constitution itself recognized pre-ratification citizenship, in the clause detailing the eligibility to be President:
This was the provision that allowed the first seven Presidents to be elected, even though they had been born prior to the ratification of the Constitution. They were citizens “at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution.”
There actually was a series of court cases, in both the U.S. and the U.K., in the fifty or so years following independence, which dealt with this very issue. The usual reason it came up was that at that time, the common law of both England and several of the colonies/states was that you had to be a British Subject (or American citizen) in order to own land in fee simple. In cases of disputed ownership of land, the issue of subject/citizen status sometimes came up.
The courts in both countries reached a similar conclusion: if a British subject left the colonies before or shortly after independence, they retained their status as British subject and never acquired American citizenship, even if they had been born in one of the colonies. On the other hand, if they voluntarily stayed in the States after independence, they were considered to have abandoned their allegiance to the Crown and ceased to be British subjects, instead acquiring U.S. citizenship.
There was one twist to this principle, however, and that was that the US courts and the British courts adopted different dates for US independence, as a matter of law. The US courts dated it from July 4, 1776, while British courts dated it from 1783, when the King agreed to the Treaty of Paris recognizing US independence. So it was still possible that there might be conflicting decisions from the two court systems, but I don’t think that ever actually happened in fact.
Fascinating, thank you. This sounds similar to what they did with Canada in the mid-20th century, except for the unpleasantness.
Thanks for your information guys.
So I’m looking for the oldest “Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution” as per Northern Piper’s post. Ben Franklin was a fair old age but I wonder were there any citizens born in the 1690s say, it’s just about plausible that one or two were born in the 1680s.
I think what NP meant is that the concept of United States citizenship predates the the adoption of the Constitution. An American who died after 1776 (or 1783 from the British perspective) should presumably count, even if he died before the adoption of the Constitution.
I found a Pennsylvania botanist named John Bartram who was born in 1699 and died in 1777. I’m sure there must have been folks born earlier than that still alive in 1776, but I haven’t found any yet.
Ok so do we have any known Americans older than John Bartram?
There’s Thomas, 6th Lord Fairfax (1693-1781). Not that he was have considered himself to be an American citizen.
I’m going to guess that there would have been quite a few people knocking around in 1776 who were in their 90’s. I live in New England and have perused more than one 18th century cemetery. Generally speaking, the old colonials were a pretty long lived lot. Sure you see the children who died young and a fair amount of women who died in child birth, but there are also a ton of people who lived into their nineties. The lifestyle of those people was pretty conducive to long life. So while I’m not sure there you will get a specific answer to your question, people even older than Ben Franklin was at the time would not have been rare.