- Born ca. 1721 - Revolutionary leader - Cousin of Thomas
Jefferson - Attorney General of Virginia Colony - Chaired first
and second Continental Congress - Died 1775 First to be called
“Father of country” Peyton Randolph was on the black list of
patriots the British proposed to arrest and hang after he
presided over the Continental Congress in 1775. Upon his return
to Williamsburg, the volunteer company of militia of the city
offered him its protection in an address that concluded: "May
heaven grant you long to live the father of your country – and
the friend to freedom and humanity!" If his friend George
Washington succeeded him as America’s patriarch, Randolph
nevertheless did as much as any Virginian to bring the new
nation into the world. He presided over every important Virginia
assembly in the years leading to the Revolution, was among the
first of the colony's great men to oppose the Stamp Act, chaired
the first meeting of the delegates of 13 colonies at
Philadelphia in 1774, and chaired the second in