Aaron Ogden

Aaron Ogden (December 3, 1756April 19, 1839) was an American soldier, lawyer, United States Senator and the fifth governor of New Jersey. Ogden is perhaps best known today as the complainant in Gibbons v. Ogden which destroyed the monopoly power of steamboats on the Hudson River in 1824. Early life Ogden was born in Elizabethtown (known today as "Elizabeth") in the Province of New Jersey. He was the son of Robert Ogden, a lawyer and public official who served as Speaker of the New Jersey lower house immediately preceding the Revolution, and Phebe (née Hatfield) Ogden. Ogden's brother Matthias Ogden (1754–1791) was a Revolutionary War soldier and his nephew, Daniel Haines, also served as Governor of New Jersey on two separate occasions. Ogden, a Presbyterian, graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1773, and served as a grammar school tutor from 1773 to 1775. Career In the American Revolutionary War, Ogden was appointed a lieutenant in the 1st New Jersey Regiment; his older brother Matthias Ogden was the lieutenant colonel. Aaron Ogden served in various roles through the war, seeing action and rising to the rank of brigade major. In 1778, he visited the house occupied by the family of diarist Sally Wister, who described him as "a genteel young fellow, with an aquiline nose." Ogden was wounded at the siege of Yorktown in 1781.