The 14 Presidents Before George Washington, 1774–1788

Published December 2, 2012 · Last updated November 8, 2026

Last updated: November 2026

George Washington took the oath as the first President of the United States on April 30, 1789. But for almost 15 years before that, Americans already had someone called “President.” Fourteen men held that title, from Peyton Randolph in 1774 to Cyrus Griffin in 1788.

So was Washington really first? Yes, for the office we mean today. Here is who those 14 men were, why some lists say there were only eight, and what to make of the claim that John Hanson was America’s first president.

Quick answer: Fourteen men served as president of the Continental Congress and its successor, the Confederation Congress, between 1774 and 1788. Their official title from 1781 was “President of the United States in Congress Assembled.” They were presiding officers chosen by Congress, not elected chief executives. The “8 presidents” version counts only John Hanson and the seven men after him. Washington was the first President under the Constitution, which created the modern office.

All 14 presidents before Washington

#	President	State	Term
1	Peyton Randolph	Virginia	Sept. 5 – Oct. 22, 1774
2	Henry Middleton	South Carolina	Oct. 22 – Oct. 26, 1774
1	Peyton Randolph (2nd time)	Virginia	May 10 – May 24, 1775
3	John Hancock	Massachusetts	May 24, 1775 – Oct. 29, 1777
4	Henry Laurens	South Carolina	Nov. 1, 1777 – Dec. 9, 1778
5	John Jay	New York	Dec. 10, 1778 – Sept. 28, 1779
6	Samuel Huntington	Connecticut	Sept. 28, 1779 – July 10, 1781
7	Thomas McKean	Delaware	July 10 – Nov. 5, 1781
8	John Hanson	Maryland	Nov. 5, 1781 – Nov. 4, 1782
9	Elias Boudinot	New Jersey	Nov. 4, 1782 – Nov. 3, 1783
10	Thomas Mifflin	Pennsylvania	Nov. 3, 1783 – June 3, 1784
11	Richard Henry Lee	Virginia	Nov. 30, 1784 – Nov. 4, 1785
3	John Hancock (2nd time)	Massachusetts	Nov. 23, 1785 – June 5, 1786
12	Nathaniel Gorham	Massachusetts	June 6, 1786 – Feb. 2, 1787
13	Arthur St. Clair	Pennsylvania	Feb. 2 – Nov. 4, 1787
14	Cyrus Griffin	Virginia	Jan. 22 – Nov. 2, 1788

Dates follow the list compiled from Jillson and Wilson’s study of the Continental Congress. Some sources end Griffin’s term in 1789, and a few give slightly different end dates for Mifflin and St. Clair.

The 14 men came from nine of the 13 states. Virginia supplied three, and Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and South Carolina two each. Randolph and Hancock each served twice.

Why some lists say 8 presidents and others say 14

Both numbers come from where you start counting.

• 14 counts every president of Congress from the First Continental Congress in September 1774 to the end of the Confederation Congress in 1788.
• 8 starts with John Hanson in November 1781 and counts him plus Boudinot, Mifflin, Lee, Hancock, Gorham, St. Clair and Griffin. The reasoning is that Hanson was the first to serve the full one-year term set by the Articles of Confederation.

The “8” list skips two men who also served under the Articles. The Articles took effect on March 1, 1781, while Samuel Huntington was already president, and Thomas McKean was the first president elected after that date. So even by its own logic, the shorter list is a matter of choice, not fact.

What the president of Congress actually did

Very little, by design. Delegates feared putting power in one person’s hands, so they gave their presiding officer even less authority than the speakers of colonial assemblies had.

The president ran meetings and kept order in debate. He signed Congress’s official papers and handled its mail, but he could not answer a letter unless Congress told him to. He could not set the agenda, appoint committees, command the army, veto laws or meet foreign envoys on his own. The job had no salary.

The Articles of Confederation mention the office only once. Article IX let Congress choose one of its members to preside and barred anyone from serving more than one year in any three. That is why terms after 1781 run about a year.

Real executive power sat elsewhere. In 1781 Congress made Robert Morris “Superintendent of Finance” and handed him sweeping authority over money and supplies. Historian Ray Raphael argues Morris, not any president of Congress, was the nation’s first true executive.

Was John Hanson the first president?

<figure class=”wp-block-image size-full”><img src=”https://hankeringforhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/John-Hanson1.jpg” alt=”John Hanson, president of Congress 1781–1782, portrait by John Hesselius”/><figcaption class=”wp-element-caption”>John Hanson, president of Congress from 1781 to 1782</figcaption></figure>

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No, not in any sense that matters for the modern presidency. Hanson was the first president of Congress to serve the full one-year term under the Articles of Confederation. That makes him a footnote worth knowing, not a forgotten head of state.

The “Hanson was first” story grew in the late 1800s and early 1900s, pushed by his grandson’s campaign. Maryland chose him as one of its two statues for the U.S. Capitol in 1903, and the bronze still stands in the Hall of Columns. A 1930s biography titled John Hanson, Our First President spread the idea further.

The popular version credits Hanson personally with creating the Treasury, the Great Seal and Thanksgiving. Congress did those things. Its president had no power to act alone.

One quote often offered as proof is Washington supposedly congratulating Hanson on filling “the most important seat in the United States.” We could not find that line in Washington’s letters to Hanson in the National Archives’ Founders Online. His November 15, 1781, letter to Hanson simply thanks Congress for praising his army’s victory at Yorktown.

Was there a Black president before George Washington?

No. The viral claim that John Hanson was Black mixes up two different men.

The photo shared online shows a different John Hanson, a formerly enslaved man from Maryland who bought his freedom, moved to Liberia in 1827 and later served as a senator there. His portrait is a daguerreotype from the 1850s, more than 70 years after the president of Congress died in 1783. Photography of that kind did not exist until the 1830s. The Library of Congress, USA Today and PolitiFact have all debunked the claim.

None of the 14 presidents of Congress were Black. Barack Obama, elected in 2008, was the first Black President of the United States.

Why Washington is still the first president

The Articles of Confederation created a league of states with a weak Congress and no executive branch. When that system failed, the Constitution of 1787 created a new office: a President with real powers, chosen by electors, separate from Congress.

The framers borrowed only the title. Historian Edmund Burnett put it plainly: the two offices shared a name and almost nothing else. The old president presided and did not govern. The new one governs and does not preside.

The Confederation Congress faded out in late 1788, the Constitution took effect on March 4, 1789, and Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789. He was the first person to hold the office of President of the United States, and the answer on a history test is still George Washington.

Frequently asked questions

How many presidents were there before George Washington? Fourteen men served as president of the Continental and Confederation Congresses from 1774 to 1788. Lists that say eight count only those from John Hanson onward.

Who was the first president before George Washington? Peyton Randolph of Virginia, elected president of the First Continental Congress on September 5, 1774.

Who was president when the Declaration of Independence was signed? John Hancock. His large signature is the most famous on the document.

Was John Hanson Black? No. The photo used in that claim shows John Hanson of Liberia, a different man who lived decades later.

Why isn’t John Hanson considered the first president? He presided over Congress for one year with no executive power. The office of President of the United States did not exist until the Constitution created it in 1789, six years after Hanson died.

What was the official title of the presidents before Washington? From 1781 it was “President of the United States in Congress Assembled.” Before that, they were known as president of the Continental Congress.

Sources

• President of the Continental Congress, Wikipedia (term dates and powers, citing Jillson and Wilson, Congressional Dynamics, 1994, and Burnett, The Continental Congress, 1941)
• George Washington or John Hanson: Who Was the First President?, Ray Raphael, Journal of the American Revolution, August 25, 2015
• From George Washington to John Hanson, 15 November 1781, Founders Online, National Archives
• John Hanson Statue, Architect of the Capitol
• Don’t Be Fooled by Primary Sources, Library of Congress, April 1, 2014
• No, the first American president wasn’t a Black man named John Hanson, PolitiFact, July 25, 2019
• Fact check: Barack Obama, not John Hanson, was the first Black U.S. president, USA Today
• First in Piece, Snopes
• The Presidents Before Washington, AmericanRevolution.org