gradually gaining greater and greater committee responsibilities, until May 1779, when he and Abraham Clark were elected as New Jersey representatives to the Continental Congress (replacing Frederick Frelinghuysen and Elias Dayton). He played a particularly active role in Congress through July 1781, when he became seriously ill, and then served intermittently, through the winter of 1785. Continental Congress and legal career He was elected to represent Somerset County in the New Jersey General Assembly in 1777. In 1778 he served on the state’s Committee of Safety. Then from 1779 to 1781 New Jersey sent him as a delegate to the Continental Congress. His work in Congress was largely directed to issues of finance and supply. He began to study law under Richard Stockton and was admitted to the bar in April 1781. He returned to the college and also opened a law office in Trenton. During these years he was named as clerk of the New Jersey Supreme Court. In 1783, he resigned from the college to devote himself to his legal career. He returned to the Continental Congress in 1784 and 1785. Constitutional Convention delegate In 1786 Houston was appointed to a commission to study the defects in the Articles of Confederation which joined the states. He went to the Annapolis Convention to discuss the problem. Instead of proposing changes to the articles, this Convention called for a full Constitutional Convention. When the United States Constitutional Convention assembled in 1787, he went to Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania as a delegate. Houston only remained at the convention for a week before his failing health caused him to withdraw. Death Houston died of tuberculosis the following year in Frankford, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia) and was buried at the Second Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Philadelphia. Later, he was reburied at the Mount Vernon Cemetery in Philadelphia. References External links 1746 births 1788 deaths 18th-century American politicians 18th-century deaths from tuberculosis American Presbyterians Burials at Mount Vernon Cemetery (Philadelphia) Continental Congressmen from New Jersey Tuberculosis deaths in Pennsylvania Members of the American Philosophical Society Members of the New Jersey General Assembly People from Sumter County, South Carolina People of colonial Pennsylvania Princeton University alumni New Jersey militiamen in the American Revolution Founding Fathers of the United States