Not More Illustrious for Public Services Than For Private Virtues

Josiah Bartlett is one of those names that shows up on the Declaration of Independence, gets a nod in a textbook, then quietly disappears behind louder, flashier founders. That is a shame. If you trace his life from a muddy frontier village in New Hampshire to the floor of the Continental Congress, then on to the governor’s chair and the sickbed of half his colony, you find a man who was constantly doing the hard, unglamorous work that keeps a revolution from collapsing in on itself.