McKean David - Suspected of independence : the life of Thomas McKean, Americas first power broker

1734 (March)

Thomas McKean born in New London, Pennsylvania, to William and Letitia Finney McKean.

1742

Letitia Finney dies. McKean enters Dr. Alisons Academy.

1750

McKean studies law in the office of David Finney, New Castle, Delaware.

17541763

French and Indian War.

1762

McKean elected to the Delaware of House of Assembly. He is reelected for the next seventeen years until he declines reelection.

1763 (July)

McKean marries Mary Borden of Bordentown, New Jersey.

1765 (March)

The Stamp Act, designed to raise 60 annually in the colonies, calls for a tax in the form of stamps affixed to newspapers, legal documents, and other papers.

1765 (July)

James Otis of Boston argues that there can be no colonial taxation without representation.

1765 (summer)

Sons of Liberty groups are formed in Boston, New York, and other colonies to oppose the Stamp Act.

1765 (October)

Stamp Act Congress meets in New York City with representatives from nine colonies. McKean and Caesar Rodney are delegates.

1766 (March)

Parliament repeals the Stamp Act but passes the Declaratory Act, stating it has the right to make laws for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.

1770 (March)

British soldiers kill four Massachusetts protesters in an incident known as the Boston Massacre.

1772

McKean is unanimously elected Speaker of the Delaware Assembly.

1773 (March)

Mary Borden McKean dies at New Castle, leaving six children.

1773 (May)

Parliament passes the Tea Act to save the East India Company from bankruptcy.

1773 (December)

Known as the Boston Tea Party, a band of men disguised as Indians and led by Samuel Adams board ships and throw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.

1774 (September)

McKean marries Sarah Armitage at New Castle.

1774 (fall)

First Continental Congress meets in Philadelphia with fifty-five delegates, including McKean. All the colonies are represented except Georgia.

1775 (April)

Battles of Lexington and Concord in which Paul Revere and William Dawes summon Minutemen, who inflict heavy casualties on the British.

1775 (May)

Second Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia with McKean in attendance. Congress votes to raise an army, and George Washington is named commander in chief.

1775 (July)

General Washington takes command of an army of fifteen thousand men in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1776 (June)

Richard Henry Lee proposes a resolution in Congress calling for independence from Great Britain. Days later, Congress authorizes a committee to draft a formal declaration.

1776 (July)

Congress votesMcKean votes ayeto approve the Declaration of Independence, with New York abstaining.

1776 (summer, fall)

Americans suffer heavy losses in New York and are pushed south through New Jersey. Colonel McKean, commanding the Fourth Battalion of the Associators, marches to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and returns to Delaware in August.

1776 (December)

Washington with his army crosses the Delaware into Pennsylvania, and the British retire for the winter.

1777 (July)

McKean becomes the first chief justice of Pennsylvania under the first Pennsylvania state convention of 1776 and serves for the next twenty-two years.

1777 (October)

General John Burgoyne captures Ticonderoga in a stunning victory for the Continental Army.

1777 (AugustOctober)

British General Howe defeats General Washington at Brandywine, and later at Germantown. The British occupy Philadelphia.

1778 (February)

France, which had recognized American independence the previous December, joins the United States in its war against Great Britain.

1780

British rout the Americans in South Carolina.

1781 (July)

McKean is elected president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation.

1781 (August)

Cornwallis establishes a base at Yorktown, Virginia.