William Duer (18 March 1743 – 7 May 1799) was a member of the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1779 and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury from 1789 to 1792.
Biography[]
William Duer was born in Devon, England in 1743, the son of an Antiguan planter. He was educated at Eton College and became an ensign in the British Army, serving as aide-de-camp to Robert Clive in India before being sent back to England due to his ill health. On his father's death, he took over his estates in Dominica, and he traded extensively with New York merchant Philip Schuyler, who persuaded him to move to Albany in the 1770s. Duer became a successful lumber producer, and he served in the New York Provincial Congress in 1775, the State Senate from 1777 to 1778, in the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1779, and in the General Assembly in 1786. After Schuyler's son-in-law Alexander Hamilton became President George Washington's Treasury Secretary, Duer became Hamilton's assistant, and he continued to speculate in American bonds and was ruined by the Panic of 1792 and was held in debtors' prison for the rest of his life, dying in 1799.