Abraham Clark
In 1776 Abraham Clark carried New Jersey into the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence, and later represented the state in the early federal House of Representatives.
Born February 15, 1726 / Died September 15, 1794
On February 15, 1726, in Elizabethtown, Province of New Jersey, Abraham Clark was born into a farming family with modest means. He became a surveyor, scrivener, and county official, gaining local standing through practical legal work rather than formal university training. By the early 1770s, New Jersey committees and provincial politics had pulled him into the resistance movement against British authority.
Clark entered the Continental Congress in 1776 as part of New Jersey's delegation and signed the Declaration of Independence after the colony replaced more cautious representatives. During the war he worked on military finance and pension questions while his own sons suffered on British prison ships, giving his politics a deeply personal stake. From 1791 to 1794 he served in the U.S. House of Representatives, carrying Revolutionary convictions into the first years of federal government.
Clark's work on pensions and compensation linked the Revolution to later federal obligations toward veterans and public creditors. His signature on the Declaration and later service in the House also fixed New Jersey's place in both the independence movement and the new constitutional order.
Key Contributions
- Clark was a delegate for New Jersey to the Continental Congress where he signed the Declaration of Independence and later served in the United States House of Representatives in both the Second and Third United States Congress, from March 4, 1791, until his death in 1794.
- Abraham Clark was born on February 15, 1726.
- As one of New Jersey's delegates, Abraham helped tie New Jersey to the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and to the new republican order that followed.
Related Events
Declaration of Independence adopted
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and ordered the document printed as the public case for separation.
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