Jedediah Huntington, born in Norwich, Connecticut, on the 4th of
August, 1743, was educated at Harvard, and graduating there when he
was twenty, delivered the first English oration ever pronounced in
that university. He engaged in commercial pursuits with his father,
and at the beginning of the Revolution was an active member of the
Sons of Liberty, and first captain, then colonel, in one of the local
regiments. Joining the Continental army at Cambridge in April, 1775,
he aided in repulsing the British at Danbury the following year, and
on the 12th of May, 1777, was commissioned brigadier-general. In
September, he was ordered to Philadelphia, and in May, 1778, to the
Hudson. He served in the court-martial that tried Lee, and also in the
one that examined André. At the close of the war, by a resolution
in Congress he was brevetted major-general. He was State treasurer,
and delegate to the convention that adopted the Constitution of the
United States. He was appointed by Washington collector of customs at
New London, to which place he removed in 1789, and held the office
twenty-six years. A zealous supporter of charitable institutions,
he was a member of the first Board of Foreign Missions. On the 10th
of May, 1784, at a meeting of officers, he was appointed one of a
committee of four to draft a plan of organization, which resulted in
their reporting on the 13th of that month the Constitution of the
Society of the Cincinnati. His first wife, Faith Trumbull, daughter of
the war governor of Connecticut, died while Huntington was on his way
to join the army in 1775, and his second wife was the sister of Bishop
Moore of Virginia. General Huntington died in New London, Connecticut,
on the 25th of September, 1818.