Paine Wingate
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Paine Wingate (14 May 1739– 7 March 1838) was an American preacher, farmer, and statesman from Stratham, New Hampshire. He served New Hampshire in the Continental Congress and both the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
Wingate was born in Amesbury, Massachusetts in 1739. His father (also Paine) was a minister there. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1759 and was ordained a minister of the Congregational Church in 1763. He became a pastor in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire.
In 1776 Wingate gave up his ministry and moved to Stratham, where he took up farming. He was elected to several terms in New Hampshire's state house of representatives, and was a delegate to their state constitutional convention in 1781.
In 1788, he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress. New Hampshire appointed him to the first United States Senate, in which he served from 4 March 1789 until 3 March 1793. He was then elected to the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 4 March 1793 to 3 March 1795.
After his national service, he served as an associate justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court from 1798 to 1908. When he died at age 98 in 1838, he was the last surviving delegate to the Continental Congress and the first United States Senate. For several years he had been to oldest graduate of Harvard. Wingate is buried in the Stratham Cemetery.
