Jacob Duché

Who was Jacob Duché?

The Reverend Jacob Duché was a Rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the first chaplain to the Continental Congress.

Duché was born in Philadelphia in 1737, the son of Colonel Jacob Duché, Sr., later mayor of Philadelphia and grandson of Anthony Duché, a French Huguenot refugee who accompanied William Penn to Pennsylvania. He was educated at the Philadelphia Academy and then in the first class of the College of Philadelphia, where he also worked as a tutor of Greek and Latin. After graduating as valedictorian in 1757, he studied briefly at Cambridge University before being ordained an Anglican clergyman by the Bishop of London and returning to the colonies.

In 1759 he married Elizabeth Hopkinson, sister of Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Duché first came to the attention of the First Continental Congress in September 1774, when he was summoned to Carpenters' Hall to lead the opening prayers. Opening the session on the 7th of that month, he read the 35th Psalm, and then broke into extemporaneous prayer.