Jonathan Dayton-Signer of the Constitution

Jonathan Dayton was born October 16, 1790 and he died October 1824 in Elizabethtown, New Jersey.  As a young school boy Dayton attended Reeves School, taught by prominent educator Tapping Reeves, with Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.  He went on to attend the College of New Jersey (Princeton University today) were he left early to fight in the Revolutionary War.

Jonathan Dayton joined the 3rd New Jersey Regiment under his father at the age of fifteen.  He was involved in the fighting that took place against the British in Canada during 1776.  He was at Valley Forge the winter the Continental Army stayed there.  He also achieved the rank of captain at the age of nineteen.  At Valley Forge he was on of the officers trained by Friedrick Von Steuben.  Later on in the war he and his uncle were captured in New Jersey by Loyalists who detained them in New York all winter before releasing them.  After the war he studied law before being asked as a delegate to the Continental Congress.

New Jersey asked Jonathan Dayton's father, Elias Dayton, to be a delegate for their state, but he declined the position to his younger (27) son Jonathan Dayton.  As a delegate from New Jersey, Dayton kept a fairly low profile because of his age.  However, he contributed as being part of the group in Philadelphia who hammered out the New Jersey and Virginia plans into what we have as our congress today.  Of Dayton, William Pierce wrote, "there is an impetuosity in his temper that is injurious to him; but there is an honest rectitude about him that makes him a valuable Member of Society."  Jonathan Dayton, young as he was, was one of the great founders of our country who got together in Philadelphia and created what America has called her greatest law for over two-hundred twenty years.