Continental Association in the context of "First Continental Congress"

John Jay (December 23 [O.S. December 12], 1745 – May 17, 1829) was an American statesman, diplomat, signatory of the Treaty of Paris, and a Founding Father of the United States. He served from 1789 to 1795 as the first chief justice of the United States and from 1795 to 1801 as the second governor of New York. Jay directed U.S. foreign policy for much of the 1780s and was an important leader of the Federalist Party after the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788.

Jay was born into a wealthy family of merchants and New York City government officials of French Huguenot and Dutch descent. He became a lawyer and joined the New York Committee of Correspondence, organizing American opposition to British policies such as the Intolerable Acts in the leadup to the American Revolution. Jay was elected to the First Continental Congress, where he signed the Continental Association, and to the Second Continental Congress, where he served as its president. From 1779 to 1782, Jay served as the ambassador to Spain; he persuaded Spain to provide financial aid to the fledgling United States. He also served as a negotiator of the Treaty of Paris, in which Britain recognized American independence. Following the end of the war, Jay served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, directing United States foreign policy under the Articles of Confederation government. He also served as the first secretary of state on an interim basis.

Thomas Lynch Jr. (August 5, 1749 – December 17, 1779) was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of South Carolina and a Founding Father of the United States. His father Thomas Lynch was a member of the Continental Congress and had signed the 1774 Continental Association. When he had to step down because of illness, Thomas Lynch Jr. was selected to fill his post.

Roger Sherman (April 19, 1721 – July 23, 1793) was an early American politician, lawyer, and a Founding Father of the United States. Representing Connecticut, he is the only person to sign all four great state papers of the United States: the Continental Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. He also signed the 1774 Petition to the King.

Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Sherman established a legal career in Litchfield County, Connecticut, despite a lack of formal education. After a period in the Connecticut House of Representatives, he served as a justice of the Superior Court of Connecticut from 1766 to 1789. Connecticut sent him to the Continental Congress, and he was a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence.

The Continental Congress was a series of legislative bodies, with some executive function, who acted as the Provisional Government for the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain in North America, and the newly declared United States before, during, and after the American Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress refers to both the First and Second Congresses of 1774–1781 and at the time, also described the Congress of the Confederation of 1781–1789. The Confederation Congress operated as the first federal government until being replaced following ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Until 1785, the Congress met predominantly at what is today Independence Hall in Philadelphia, though it was relocated temporarily on several occasions during the Revolutionary War and the fall of Philadelphia.

The First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in 1774 in response to escalating tensions between the colonies and the British, which culminated in passage of the Intolerable Acts by the British Parliament following the Boston Tea Party. The First Congress met for about six weeks, mainly to try to repair the fraying relationship between Britain and the colonies while asserting the rights of colonists, proclaiming and passing the Continental Association, which was a unified trade embargo against Britain, and successfully building consensus for establishment of a second congress. The Second Continental Congress convened in 1775, soon after hostilities broke out in Massachusetts. Soon after meeting, the Second Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition to King George III, established the Continental Army, and elected George Washington commander of the new army. After the king issued the Proclamation of Rebellion in August 1775 in response to the Battle of Bunker Hill, some members of the Second Congress concluded that peace with Britain would not be forthcoming, and began working towards unifying the colonies into a new nation. The body adopted the Lee Resolution for Independence on July 2, 1776, and the Declaration of Independence two days later, on July 4, 1776, proclaiming that the former colonies were now independent sovereign states.

Carpenters' Hall, in Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the official birthplace of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and a key meeting place for colonial delegates during the early part of the American Revolution. Completed in 1775, the two-story brick meeting hall was built for and is still privately owned by the Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, the country's oldest extant craft guild.

The First Continental Congress met at the building in 1774 and passed and signed the Continental Association. In June 1776, it was where the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference officially declared the Province of Pennsylvania's independence from the British Empire and established the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, mobilized the Pennsylvania militia for the American Revolutionary War, set up the machinery for the Pennsylvania Provincial Convention from July 15 to September 28 in 1776, which framed the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 and enabled the Declaration of Independence to be written and ultimately adopted. It was briefly occupied in 1777 by the British Army during the war.

The Suffolk Resolves was a declaration made on September 9, 1774, by the leaders of Suffolk County, Massachusetts. The declaration rejected the Massachusetts Government Act and resulted in a boycott of imported goods from Britain unless the Intolerable Acts were repealed. The Resolves were recognized by statesman Edmund Burke as a major development in colonial animosity leading to adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776, and he urged British conciliation with the American colonies, to little effect. The First Continental Congress endorsed the Resolves on September 17, 1774, and passed the similarly themed Continental Association on October 20, 1774.

Thomas Lynch (1727–1776) was an American planter and statesman from South Carolina. He was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1776, and signed the 1774 Continental Association.

Benjamin Harrison V (April 5, 1726 – April 24, 1791) was an American planter, merchant, and politician who was a Founding Father of the United States. He served as a delegate to the United States Continental Congress, and was a signer of the Continental Association and the Declaration of Independence. He also served as Virginia's governor (1781–1784), affirming a tradition of public service in the Harrison family.

Benjamin was born at the family homestead, Berkeley Plantation, where in 1619 there was established one of the first annual observances of a day of Thanksgiving. It is also the location where the Army bugle call of "Taps" was written and first played in 1862. Benjamin served an aggregate of three decades in the Virginia House of Burgesses, alternately representing Surry County and Charles City County. He was among the early patriots to formally protest measures that King George III and the British Parliament imposed upon the American colonies, leading to the American Revolution. Although a slaveholder, Harrison joined a 1772 petition to the king, requesting that he abolish the slave trade.

Richard Henry Lee (January 20, 1732 – June 19, 1794) was an American statesman and Founding Father from Virginia, best known for the June 1776 Lee Resolution, the motion in the Second Continental Congress calling for the colonies' independence from Great Britain leading to the United States Declaration of Independence, which he signed. Lee also served a one-year term as the president of the Continental Congress, proposed and was a signatory to the Continental Association, signed the Articles of Confederation, and was a United States Senator from Virginia from 1789 to 1792, serving part of that time as the second president pro tempore of the upper house. He was a member of the Lee family, a historically influential family in Virginia politics.