Elias Boudinot (/ɪˈlaɪəs buːˈdɪnɒt/ il-EYE-əs boo-DIN-ot; May 2, 1740 – October 24, 1821) was an American Founding Father, lawyer, statesman, and early abolitionist and women's rights advocate.

During the Revolutionary War, Boudinot was an intelligence officer and prisoner-of-war commissary under general George Washington, working to improve conditions for prisoners on both the American and British sides.

His mother, Mary Catherine Williams, was born in the British West Indies; her father was from Wales.

They were a Huguenot (French Protestant) family who fled to New York about 1687 to avoid the religious persecutions of King Louis XIV.

Annis became one of the first published women poets in the Thirteen Colonies, and her work appeared in leading newspapers and magazines.

Susan married William Bradford, who became Chief Justice of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under George Washington.

He owned large tracts in Ohio including most of Green Township in what is now the western suburbs of Cincinnati, where there is a street bearing his surname.

In the early stages of the Revolutionary War, he was active in promoting enlistment; several times he loaned money to field commanders to purchase supplies.

The President of Congress was a mostly ceremonial position with no real authority, but the office did require him to handle a good deal of correspondence and sign official documents.

[4] When the United States government was formed in 1789, Boudinot was elected from New Jersey to the US House of Representatives; he was also an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate that year.

In October 1795, President George Washington appointed him as Director of the United States Mint, a position he held through succeeding administrations until he retired in 1805.

When the Continental Congress was forced to leave Philadelphia in 1783 while he was president, he moved the meetings to Princeton, where they met in the college's Nassau Hall.

On September 24, 1789, the House of Representatives voted to recommend the First Amendment of the newly drafted Constitution to the states for ratification.

Boudinot said that he could not think of letting the session pass over without offering an opportunity to all the citizens of the United States of joining, with one voice, in returning to Almighty God their sincere thanks for the many blessings he had poured down upon them.

The Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia has a collection of incoming correspondence and several legal agreements pertaining to land ownership related to Boudinot from 1777 to 1821 in its holdings.