William Churchill Houston (c. 1746 – August 12, 1788), a Founding Father of the United States, was a teacher, lawyer and statesman.
John Adams, who met him in 1774, applauded him as among the Sons of Liberty, and in the winter of 1775, he had traveled to Boston, possibly for the Continental Congress.
In February 1776, the New Jersey Council of Safety recorded his election as an officer in the Somerset County militia; he resigned that summer, to return to the college, but apparently took up his commission again in the fall, when British forces moved on Princeton, and may have seen active combat during the winter campaigns in central New Jersey.
When British forces occupied Princeton in 1776 at the outset of the Revolution the college was closed and the students and professors returned home.
Houston's most significant contributions to rebellion came not as a soldier, however, but as public official in New Jersey and in the revolutionary confederation government.
In March 1777 he was elected to the position of Deputy Secretary of the Continental Congress, serving under Charles Thomson, and continued in the post until September, when Somerset County sent him to the New Jersey General Assembly as one of its three representatives.
[citation needed] He began to study law under Richard Stockton and was admitted to the bar in April 1781.