Houston served in the New Jersey Assembly in 1777 and on the Council of Public Safety in 1778. Meantime, in March, 1777, he was elected deputy secretary of the Continental Congress. His duties as such included a large part of the conespondence of the Congress as well as other secretarial tasks. Thus he was thoroughly familiar with operation of the Congress when he was elected a delegate to that body from Middlesex County, N. J., in 1779 and again in 1780 and 1781. In 1783, he resigned his professorship at Princeton and was admitted to the bar. He moved to Trenton, N. J., to practice law and was again sent to Congress in 1784.

William C. Houston’s most distinguished service was in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Faced by a common enemy, the Colonies had united in the long war and suffered and fought together. Now that independence was won, the separate states were torn by jealousies and bickering that proved near disastrous to the dream of creating a great free nation on the American Continent.

Patriotic statesmen labored long and patiently to save for peace the victory of the battlefields. Again the Scotch-Irish, including the Houstons, did great service in the task of writing the Constitution which finally welded the separate provinces into the United States of America. The Scotch-Irish tinge of the Convention is evident by the fact that of the 55 delegates, nine were graduates of Princeton, the great Presbyterian institution.

William C. Houston served throughout the convention. He signed the document submitting the Constitution to the Legislatures of the various states for ratification. For some unexplained reason, his signature does not appear on the final document.

Serving also with distinction in the Constitutional Convention was William Houstoun of Georgia who had also served in the Continental Congress. It is noted that the clerks in the Congress were careful to distinguish the two delegates of such similar names by the spelling, "Mr. Houston" and "Mr. Houstoun." The Georgia delegate was called away on urgent bus.mess before the close of the convention and neither does his signature appear on the document.

William C. Houston’s brilliant career was cut short by death in 1788 at the age of 42. In the 20 years from his graduation from college in 1768 to his death, he had been a part of