The Biographical Dictionary of Early Pennsylvania Legislators

The Biographical Dictionary of Early Pennsylvania Legislators is a collaborative project that combines support from federal, state, and private sources. In a multi-volume series it presents the lives of Pennsylvania's founders and details the development and operation of representative government from the colonial era into the national period.

A team of historians is responsible for collecting data about the approximately 1,100 legislators elected between 1682 and 1790, for writing the individual biographies and the introductory essays analyzing the history of the era, and for preparing the volumes for publication. The biographies of the assemblymen form the core of each volume. Each biographical entry consists of three parts: a biographical summary, a narrative biographical essay, and notes on sources.

Volume One, entitled Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania, 1682 - 1709 (880 pages), published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, appeared in 1991 and includes biographies of 323 legislators, along with introductory essays, graphs and charts.

Volume Two, entitled Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania, 1710 - 1756 (1,210 pages), published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, appeared in 1997 and includes biographies of 225 legislators, along with introductory essays, graphs and charts. Both volumes can be purchased from the University of Pennsylvania Press, whose toll-free number is 1-800-445-9880.

Volume Three, which will cover the period 1757-1776, is scheduled to appear late in 2000 and will include essays on approximately 150 members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, including such notables as:

• Benjamin Franklin,
• George Ross,
• John Morton,
• George Taylor,
• George Clymer (all of whom signed the Declaration of Independence),
• John Dickinson (President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania),
• Michael Hillegas (first Treasurer of the United States),
• Thomas Witting (first President of the Bank of the United States),
• David Rittenhouse (Treasurer of Pennsylvania and Director of the United States Mint),
• George Bryan (acting President of Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War),
• John Sellers (member of the first Pennsylvania Senate),
• Henry Wynkoop (Major in the Pennsylvania Militia and United States congressman), and
• John Armstrong (Brigadier General of the Pennsylvania Militia during the Revolution, and United States congressman).

The Project would like to thank the Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution and its Color Guard for its generous donation toward completion of Volume Three.