Who served as the first president of the First Continental Congress in 1774?

Peyton Randolph served as the first president of the First Continental Congress in 1774.

Randolph was a Virginia planter, lawyer, and leading colonial politician. He was chosen unanimously to preside when the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774. His role was similar to that of a presiding officer: he managed debate and represented the assembled delegates, but he was not a national president in the modern constitutional sense.

Randolph returned to Virginia after the Congress adjourned and was elected president of the Virginia Convention in 1775. He briefly presided over the Second Continental Congress when it opened in May 1775, but ill health forced him to resign. John Hancock later became the better-known president of the Second Continental Congress.

Randolph died in 1775, before the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Because George Washington and John Hancock became prominent national figures, they are sometimes incorrectly named as the first congressional president. Randolph's service belongs to the earlier stage of the independence movement, when colonial cooperation was still framed as resistance to British policy.